An Introduction I would like to welcome everyone to the Industrial & Institutional Review's initial issue. My name is Jimmy Dunn, and I am President of InterCity Oz, Inc., a commercial web presence provider. I have an intense background in business, marketing and computer related topics. I am currently the CFO of a large industrial manufacturing group. However, because of my expertise in computing, I also oversee the marketing support division, which provides the group with advertising media such as films, graphics, ad copy, and marketing consultation for the groups various members. Yet over the last several years, I have devoted almost all my time to designing internet web sites. All I can say is that I have highly competent assistants. The problem is, I am one of the few (there are others) in our company that has all of the essential backgrounds to master a web site design. While I do manage a team of designers, I am usually working on at least two of my own projects. These are usually substantial clients. While I believe that my credentials give me the credibility to write this column, I hope instead to edit it. I hope that our users will also provide us with articles, and that I can fill in where necessary. I would also like to point out that much of this site will remain very simple in design. That is because it is really expected to function in a more academic manner, it will contain a considerable amount of information in the form of text, and because it is really not targeted to a vast number of people. In this first article for the I & I Review, I would like to give an introduction to what we hope to accomplish with the site, and address an audience which the site is not really meant to attract, those seeking professional web development. This magazine is for the internet professional who designs commercial web sites. When searching the term "design" on the web, one finds many references to HTML style guides. All but a very few of these links will lead the user to a page discussing HTML tags. Even those pages that actually deal with design are usually lists of do's and don'ts. Those web sites you will find in our links section. This site will deal more with the conceptual, and even esoteric design ideas related to commercial web development. It's a jungle out there and we all know it. What Netscape plug-ins should you design for, and how soon? How soon must the designer revisit older pages that do not work with Explorer? How about Java? How can I possibly keep up with all of these new developments, and actually get them integrated into my web site? Would a very tight association of designers exchanging expertise by actually helping each other design the other's site help? What about graphics and loading times, screen resolutions and monitor color capabilities? How do the demographics of the net vary from the general population, and should we design for the gradual demographic shift towards that of the general population? Exactly where will that shift end? These and many other issues are dynamic. What is true today will not be tomorrow. I will be the first to admit that I do not have all the answers, so I hope that our readers will contribute to this field of knowledge as well. We hope to encompass these and many other issues in what we will term strategic and tactical design. We will define strategic design as the overall site concept, while tactical design is the actual laying out of a page, the graphics used, etc. We believe these terms are important because the tactical layout and use of graphics should be based on the concepts of the site, for example the target market. College kids have different computers, different connection speeds, and different design tastes than corporate CEOs. We will admit at the onset that discussions on web design are argumentative. Even in our own design group, I have found that one designer will love a particular site, while another will have just as strong of negative feelings about it. I will welcome alternate views to those that I or others express in this monthly column. However, keep in mind that we will often reference target markets. A great, young designer may not like a site designed to reach 60 year old corporate executives. That does not mean that the design is flawed, if it does in fact successfully appeal to 60 year old corporate executives. This is probably one of the greatest differences between general web design and commercial web design. It is our feeling that someone who designs commercial web sites should have a strong background in marketing, and that projects should begin with the definition of a target market. What should be obvious by now is that we will devote just as much, if not more attention to the web design prior to an HTML tag being typed, as to the physical page design. We will also point out many examples, and we will (yes folks, us too) give awards to the best sites. However, we will work our awards somewhat differently then most sites. It would seem that many web sites these days are handing out tons of awards, sometimes to many, many web sites every month. It would seem, in fact, that these awards are really a tool to obtain links. We will make one award once a month. That site will be reviewed, and critiqued within these pages, and the award will represent excellence in overall design based on specific criteria. Only commercial sites will be considered. At the end of the year, we will award one site only, based on monthly winners, as our site of the year. I would also like to address the potential clients of professional internet commercial web designers; those of you who are seeking help in designing your business's web site. I hope that by being almost tragically honest I will save many of you from web disasters. By tragically honest, I mean that I am probably about to anger a few people. However, I would like to talk about selecting a web designer, and then how to work with the designer. A professional web designer carries to the table many tools. He must either be a great graphics artist, have a professional knowledge of HTML coding, perhaps be a programmer, sometimes a technician, or he must have a team which can support him in these areas. Regardless, a successful head web designer will have a sixth sense about the web audience born of countless hours glued to an internet connected monitor. Indeed, web design varies from other graphic design, just as the web audience is different demographically from the general public. Graphic artists do often develop their own style over their careers. Even though they may be great print artists, those inexperienced with the web will almost always provide faulty web design. For one thing, the nature of graphics viewed on screen is very, very different than when viewed on paper. I have seen many people go straight to their advertising agent, or to a graphics artist that they have previous experience with when they decided to create a web site. This is not inherently a mistake. Most reputable advertising firms do have significant marketing know-how. But it can be a huge problem. If the advertising agency or graphic artist has little or no experience with the internet, if they do not have that "sixth sense", then chances are you will not get what you are paying for. Yet many of them will not advise you of their inexperience, and what is worse, we have seen many advertising agencies which mistakenly believe they can do a good job having absolutely no experience with the internet what so ever. There is a very easy progression of steps that you can take to find out if your ad agency knows what it is doing. First of all, find out if they have an internet connection. In many Midwestern states, they will not. If they do not, forget it. Next, find out what kind of browser they are using. People on AOL have access to the internet, but have no clue what it looks like. Ask them to give you a short tour of the internet. If they fumble around, again, these people have not had enough experience to help you. Finally, ask them to show you some of the sites that they have designed on line. If they cannot, yours will be their first grand experiment. If you do not mind paying money to be experimented on, go for it. There is also the other end of the internet. There are many people out there who can show you web sites they have designed, and will be very proficient on the web. Yet they will be computer technicians with little or no background in business and marketing. Whether or not you should let someone such as this design your business web site is much more difficult to decide than with the above example. They may very well have developed marketing skills, or they may not have. Use some common sense. After discussing the web site with them, if you as a businessman know a significant amount more about marketing than they do, or if their discussions with you focused too much on technical details and very little on the marketing and business aspects of the site, then consider checking around some more. Take a look at their sites. Are they appealing? Ask yourself if their site design would appeal to the market they are attacking. Another consideration when choosing a web designer is the fact that many of them are "attached" to specific hosting services, either as employees or consultants. That means that they deal with one specific server that hosts web sites. In these cases, it may be very likely that if they design your site, you must place that site on their server. Again, this may or may not be a bad thing. Keep in mind that the server where your site is located can make a significant difference, and may very well be worth additional cost. If the internet web designer is very good, one would think that the server would receive a great deal of traffic. But that may not be the case, or the traffic that the server receives may not be of benefit to your business. At times, there may simply be a better choice. An example of this would be the hotel which wishes to be on the web. Many hotel chains have corporate web sites, even documenting specific hotels. But what if the city where the hotel is located also has a community site? The corporate site may be a less expensive alternative, but it is our contention that most people who are traveling and seeking lodging over the net will search for, and find the community net bearing the cities name before they will find the hotel's corporate site. There are many other factors. Does the web hosting service offer audited hit counts? Does the hosting service receive very heavy traffic. If it does, then it probably provides significant information or entertainment value to the internet. We have found that Yellow Page only hosting servers provide little in the way of a built in audience for their clients. Is the hosting service specialized for a particular market? Is the host slow, not having enough server or bandwidth? These and many other issues should be examined. Once you have selected the professional commercial web designer to build your site, what's next? The first thing that many businesses do is decide what they want in a web site by examining every other web site of similar businesses. For example, a banker will look at as many other banks on the internet as he can, and will dictate a similar design for his web site. Do not do this. First of all, the internet demands variety. Keep in mind your target market, but if you must dictate to your designer, search for "cool sites". What you will actually find is very few commercial sites that are listed, but you will get a better idea of what the internet expects then looking vertically at your colleges. Another problem I have seen with some clients dictating design is those who want the site to look good on every browser. It's not uncommon for them to be using something like AOL to view the internet! We have even had people using early versions of mosaic complain that we should redesign our site so that they can view it better. Chances are, if everyone on the internet can view your site with no problems, then no one will come. It will simply be too boring. The current AOL browser offers virtually no formatting. If a designer formats for that, the site may receive a few AOL visitors, but miss the other 40 million internet users. If you have the money allocated to the project, the designer can produce different versions of the same page for different browsers. However, many businesses do not allocate enough budget to do this, and in fact, often do not allocate enough to produce an effective web site in the first place. Currently, if a web site is viable for Netscape and MS Explorer, it will look good to significantly all of the internet. If you have selected the proper designer, your best bet is to leave the design largely up to him. If he is good, he will ask the proper questions and you will end up with as successful of site as possible. Finally, as I have mentioned above, the conceptual design of an internet commercial site should encompass much more than the physical design of the web pages. It should also encompass the strategic purpose of the site. If the site is designed to market a company or product, then one of the considerations should be interactivity after the site is complete. In other words, you as the business manager should interact with the site and the internet. If you do not, you will not receive the full potential of the money you have and will spend. As hard as it is to believe, many small businesses on the web do not have internet access themselves. They have no e-mail address, and are completely removed from interaction with their site. This really does not work very well. Not only should the business be able to answer e-mail, personnel should visit related newsgroups, IRC chat conferences, etc. This is perhaps one of the best traffic makers for a web site, and yet very few but the most knowledgeable business owners attempt to interact with the internet community. We at InterCity Oz, Inc. hope that everyone will come to think of our review pages as the cutting edge for internet design. Each month, we will provide new articles for the design professional, so be sure to come back. Again, we want your comments, and we solicit your articles about commercial internet web design. I & I Review Home | This Month | Award Sites | Clients | Design Links

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