- Lyndon Cerejo.
It's nice having an Internet connection - my not-so-lucky relatives
and friends often come over to see what the Internet is all about.
And from the moment they log on, the thrill of using this "Internet
thing" is apparent - specially since they haven't seen
anything like this before. Once they get captivated by the multicoloured
text, flashy animated graphics, interesting JavaScript tricks,
Java applets, audio, and video it becomes difficult to tell them
that they've overstayed their welcome. For a casual surfer or
for someone who surfs for fun, all the above frills and thrills
go into making a great web site.
But the scenario is different for the serious Internet user. For
someone who uses the Web as a source of information, reference,
or for business, these frills aren't what they're looking for,
and don't contribute towards making a web site worth the online
time. A serious Internet user visits a web site with a particular
need, and if the site doesn't fulfill that need, that surfer is
lost - often forever. For instance, would you visit a news site
which is not updated regularly ? Or would you return to a corporate
site for the latest annual report, when all you find there is
an annual report from two years ago ?
The problem is that people are jumping onto the Internet bandwagon
without knowing what they're getting into. Companies these days
seem to be following government procedure in finding the "right"
web designers for their homepage - give the account to the lowest
bidder, or maybe a relative of someone in the decision hierarchy.
Or worse still, to some student who offers to "design"
webpages for just Rs. 500 per page! Today, almost anyone can build
a website, but the difficulty lies in building a successful website
- a website that fulfills some need of the target audience. Which
brings us to the first questions to be asked :
In answering the question "Why?" lie the objectives
of the website. Is the website up to create and reinforce the
company's corporate identity in cyberspace ? Does the website
exist as an online showcase or is the aim to sell products online
? Is the site an online recruitment department ? Or is it a content
driven site ? To start a website off on the right note, the target
audience should be clearly defined, and the site built to cater
to that audience - that's the answer to question number two: "For
whom?". Will the audience be businessmen, or financial
analysts, or maybe teenagers and youth ? Chaitra Leo Burnett -
the advertising agency - had their objectives clear when they
hosted their web site last year. They were looking at tapping
management graduates from leading Indian management institutes.
So the site was hosted during the recruitment period, with every
page geared towards attracting talent by projecting the agency
as the place to work in. The site had a young look and
feel, in keeping with their target audience in the early twenties.
They held quizzes and contests with prizes being given away to
attract responses. The URL was spread around target colleges (like
the Indian Institute of Management colleges), and CLB got a phenomenal
response to the site.
Finding the answer to this question decides the content that will
form the building blocks of the site. The Internet was built
to disseminate information and make data easily available - to
cater to the number one need of a cybersurfer - the need for information.
Sadly enough, many sites today lack just that, and it shows in
the results of a search for just about anything - search engine
return hits in tens of
