Website Design Methodology

A website is a crucial component of the company's Internet marketing plan and therefore its purpose is to attractively represent and promote the company globally. A web site is a virtual front-line and direct link to suppliers, distributors and potential and present customers. It is essential that a website conveys the company's objectives and goals immediately when a browser enters the site. A useful guideline when creating a web interface is to incorporate the 7Cs framework to achieve an effective web interface: The 7Cs are Context, Content, Community, Customisation, Communication, Connection and Commerce (Rayporter & Jaworski, 2001, pg115).

The Context of a web site is the design which a site presents to its audience. This design is created by a combination of colour, graphics, animation and design features.

The Content of a web site is any digital items present on the site. This includes electronic forms, text, video, graphics, downloads, chat rooms, bulletin boards, service, products and information.

A Community presence is created by users interacting with a web site and communicating with one another on issues of common interest. This can be achieved through chat rooms, bulleting boards and email. Community presence helps to develop a membership feeling on a web site this will entice users to return. On 11th January 2002 a study was carried out by McKinsey & Co (www.mckinsey.com) and Jupiter Media Metrix (www.jmm.com) that proves one third of visitors to e-commerce sites use community features and of these users two-thirds make purchases. Site visitors who contribute to community features are nine times as likely to come back to that site, and twice as likely to make a purchase. Even users who read, but don't participate in, the community sections of an e-commerce site tend to come back more often and buy more often than those who do not visit the community features at all.

Customisation: A majority of sites offer users the ability to customise the site to their own personal specification - this is called personalisation. Personalised Shopping baskets contained on web sites enable users to build and customise their own profiles by means of content selection, context selection and personalisation tools. Log-in registration or "cookies" are used to match each returning user to his or her respective personal setting. Customisation also enables the administrators of the web site to build profiles on customers using intelligent agents.

Communication on the site refers to the communication created between the users and the web site: e.g.

• Site-to-User communication e.g. Email notification on special offers or new products online.
  
• User-to-Site communication refers to online customer service requests.
  
• 2-way communication refers to users contacting the support service while online via an Internet phone connection or by direct live text chat.

The Connection of a site is the formal linkage to similar external web sites from your web site, also referred to as 'Teasers'. It is not essential aspect to a web site, as it may lead potential customers from your site to browse a competitor's web site. Linking can also be achieved through different formats e.g. by means of banner and ads.

Commerce is defined as organisations doing business with one another. The definition of commerce from a web site perspective is the sale of goods, products or services on the site.

The success of the 7Cs relies on how well each individual C supports each other and the business itself. There must be a consistency between each of the Cs. The overall design and layout of your site is extremely important. A User must easily identify the key components of your business e.g. the products and services that are available to them. Simplicity is a key aspect to a web site and it tends to attract customers more than clustered sites. Mark Hurst, Founder and President of consulting firm Creative Good, monitors the online customer experience. Below are his views on useful ways to create a good customer experience (Rayporter and Jaworski, 2001, pg121).

• Use well positioned and clearly laid out pages for ease of navigational purpose by the end users.
  
• The site should be user friendly in terms of quick download time and compatible with all browsers e.g. Internet Explorer, Netscape.
  
• Make your graphics small and concentrate on the textual content of your site as opposed to fancy graphics.
  
• Provide a good search engine facility to make it easy for your customers to search for the key information on your site.
  
• Help your users to clearly navigate for products or services quickly and easily. When users enter a web site it is common practice for users to select the list that most describes the product or service they seek therefore list the product categories clearly.
  
• Use product names that users will understand, you must assume that customers don't know about your product and services and therefore keep your product names simple.
  
• Design your site for your customers.
  

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