Want to be kept in touch with TMD along with latest news, tips and commentary? Subscribe to our quarterly eNewsletter URL
|
|
 |
News
Tuesday, 4 October 2005
Selling your products and services online can be quite a challenging exercise and it requires highly specialised skills to build a successful website.
Yet give some people a computer and Microsoft FrontPage and suddenly they believe they are a web developer. Web DIY is often fraught with danger! You wouldn’t go to your plumber if you had a problem with your car, so make sure whoever you use has commercial web experience. However, you shouldn’t confuse qualifications with experience. I know some developers who have no professional training but are far better than some who have spent years at university.
However, if you are considering "taking of care of things in house", you really need to look at the reality of doing so. Basically your site might look good (or may not) but if the nuts and bolts (functionality) don’t work, your site is not servicing your customers (or even worse turning away potential customers).
Example: a user visits your site, fills out and submits your company’s contact form but forgets to enter a vital detail (e.g. their email address). They then see a weird message telling them to hit the back button, but this normally means that they have to re-enter all their information. Most people wouldn’t bother.
What is worse is if your contact form simply doesn’t work – and believe me this happens far too frequently. You should visit your company’s site and see if the contact form actually works.
Redirecting your customers to a third party site to make payments is another common area where functionality fails. Users often get confused when they are redirected unexpectedly and they close the window half through the payment process – leaving their order stranded in cyberspace limbo. These issues need to be addressed and resolved before implementing.
A good strategy is to get someone (or a group of people) unrelated to the site / company to give your site a real work out. You may find your site works, but is difficult to use or navigate. Monitor this group or individual while they are using the site. If they get lost, don’t provide instruction straight away. See how they react. Remember, your real users won’t have yourself or one of your staff next to them on standby in case something goes wrong.
Compatibility is another area that can let your site down. Compatibility refers to whether your website will work across the 100+ browsers currently on the market. These browsers can all react differently to your website. What works on one, doesn’t mean it will work (or display) on another. Your site should also work across different platforms, i.e. PC and Mac.
Keep in mind it is going to be a challenge to make sure your site looks the same on everyone’s browser (especially if your site is complex). However you should try to test your site on as many browsers (and platforms) as possible. There will be inconstancies, but if these are minor you may be happy to leave the site as it is. However, if they are more significant, savvy developers can make minor adjustments to the code to make it work properly in most web browsers.
There are a myriad of things that need to be addressed when building a site. And although it is temping to save money by getting "a friend of a friend" who has no commercial experience to build your site, it may end up costing your company thousands through lost customers and lost sales.
Happy developing!
Trent Moffatt
Head of Development
Trent Moffatt Designs
|
|
