Bowing to office politics and the personal opinions of managers for the design of the site homepage is a recipe for disaster.
It’s inescapable that senior manager will have an opinion on the homepage – after all it seems everyone has an opinion on the homepage.
The trick is to steer a course between giving senior members of staff the opportunity to be involved in the design process, but not have the final say.
Here are 3 ways to tackle that problem:
- Ask the senior managers to get involved in the “About Us” section of the website, which is a great place to showcase the benefits of a company because it adds to your site’s credibility – which is a crucial part of your web strategy.
- Create a prototype of their ideas, using desktop publishing tools like Powerpoint and ask people – ideally customers or people not involved with the organisation - to have a look at the prototype and get some genuine feedback on the concept. You can bet your bottom dollar a homepage that just contains a photo of the CEO and the corporate mission statement will not get glowing reviews from the participants. Capture their comments on a form, or perhaps record them speaking if they are agreeable, and show these to the CEO, then put forward your user-centered design alternative.
- Visit the homepages of some well known sites and show that they are all task-focused for the users’ benefit, and not filled with mission statements and turgid marketing messages.
Usually, you only need to have this battle once then they see the error of their ways.
{ 1 comment }
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