Part 1: Thinking About Reviewing Your Goals

The first question you need to ask yourself, and your team, prior to starting a website design and development project is this: what is the goal of our website?  If you can’t answer that question, you need to take time to work with your team to find the answer.  Launching into a website project without knowing what the purpose of your website is, is a sure way to end up going over time, over budget, and ending up with a site that your organization is not happy with. Let’s take a look at a few site homepages conceived in misery and have not lived up to their grand names and competitive sets:

Yale

Unfortunately the art department at Yale has failed in their attempt to be different.  Although it is a bit funny, it doesn’t work as a usable tool that help drive interest in the program.  There is so much more that could be said, but I think it’s safe move to leave this one alone and move to our next homepage.

http://art.yale.edu/

Yahoo! Shopping

When you think Yahoo! don’t you kind of think of a large company doing well?  If you compare them to their competition, (Google) you see they are actually doing quite poorly.  Yahoo! has never really understood how people interact with the internet and their design capabilities prove that.

http://shopping.yahoo.com/

ICCM

Who is their mainstay you might ask?  Presumably Jesus.  I can’t say I am surprised that a religious organization would have such a terrible website, (the main pages are almost as bad as the home/splash page) but that doesn’t mean I am not disappointed.  A clear example of a lack of thought to how a website should be built.

http://iccmworldwide.org/index2.htm

There are obviously many problems with these three sites homepages.  Other than bad design, one thing that is frustrating is you have no idea what you are supposed to do when you get to the site.  I found myself asking questions like, “what is the purpose of the site?”, “what do these organizations want me to do?”, and “where am I supposed to go from the Home Page?”  When you don’t think about how design impacts your brand, you and your clients lose.  These sites are clear examples of how people don’t think about the details of their site, which is an important consideration when preparing for a website design project.

Next up:  Thinking About the Details