WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO?

Introduction	Imagine wheeling into the drive-thru of your favorite fast-food restaurant and learning that you need to install a special attachment on your car in order to pick up your order and that you need to watch a three-minute movie before you can even make that order. Then, when you reach the window, you look around for a few minutes before you learn that it’s not even the right window. Out of frustration, you might jump the curb and speed to a restaurant that gives you what you want on your terms, right?All too often, small businesses build sites which are the Web equivalent of this ill-conceived drive-thru. They have fallen to the lure of the latest bandwidth-devouring gizmos and made their Web site the canvas of a narcissistic programmer who values code over functionality. As a result, their site draws mostly one-hit visitors and costs them countless business opportunities.Technical communicators are highly qualified to keep businesses from making this mistake. To do this, they must convince small business owners that Web site flair isn’t as important as functionality, and that a Web site which puts a premium on usability will yield a good return on investment. They also must remind them of the Web’s power and the importance of applying forward thinking to site design. In short, technical communicators must be user advocates, showing businesses the correlation between a well-designed and effective Web site, and increased revenue.I do this on a daily basis, working almost entirely with very small companies that have fewer than 10 people on staff and a shaky, at best, understanding of the Web and how Web sites work. Their budgets are small, and their ambitions are high. They typically come to me with little planning and few concrete ideas on what they want in a Web site. Often, they have waited for a year or longer to build a Web site, and during that time, they’ve seen their competition do some flashy things.They then call me, not because I have studied and worked in technical communication, but rather because I’m “a guy who does Web sites.” Millions of other people also fit that description, from the hobbyist next door to highly skilled programmers. Therefore, it’s up to me to show the value that a technical communicator can add to a Web site project.This is particularly important for technical communicators working with small companies, because smaller companies are generally less familiar with document design and usability issues. At the same time, these companies have smaller budgets, meaning that they must get the maximum return on their investment. Put together, these factors do much to make the relationship between technical communicators and small businesses a logical one.
Can you make it play music?	On the first day of my high school pharmacy job, my boss told me the golden rule of customer relations: the customer is always right. “Even if you’re convinced that they’re out of their mind,” my boss emphasized, “just smile and assure them that you believe them.”The customer infallibility doctrine might work when one is hawking aspirin, but the independent Web designer will likely find abiding by it very difficult, if not impossible. Many times, the designer must gently redirect customer enthusiasm and naiveté into a lesson in usability.It’s not uncommon for me to field requests to incorporate .wav files on the opening page or splash large animated graphics throughout the site. While these elements might have value in special situations, they often beg the question: what’s the point? While it’s obvious to most technical communicators, small businesses frequently must be reminded that, if these elements add nothing to the effectiveness of the Web site, especially if they distract and detract, they should be avoided.Technical communicators can tell their clients what to avoid, but I find that it’s better to show them why certain elements should be avoided in specific situations. To do this, I try to start each project by using competitor Web sites as the basis for a lesson in usability and the appropriate elements of a Web site. This exercise also gives me a good opportunity to learn which design elements my clients like and which they do not.We typically start in my client’s office, reviewing their competitors’ Web sites and other sites which they like. We discuss how the client’s target audience might use a Web site, focusing on specifics, such as the effectiveness of the internal linking structure and the download time and the elements affecting it. By doing this, we learn from each other, and we each begin to understand the target audience better.I then throw another spin into the usability exercise by altering the viewing platform as much as possible. For example, if my client has a large monitor, we’ll find a computer with a smaller monitor or I’ll simply reduce the viewing window, and we’ll discuss screen use and scrolling. If the client has a direct Internet connection, I’ll use my laptop to dial in to show differences in download time, and I’ll go all the way to Netscape and Internet Explorer 3.0 versions to show the differences in presentation that users will experience when browsing the Web.If a company operates internationally, this exercise provides a good opportunity to discuss translation and localization issues. If the client isn’t familiar with these issues, I’ll use Alta Vista’s translation tool (Babel Fish) to translate a Web site from a foreign language to English. Clients find this experiment very revealing, and many become excited by the prospects of reaching the international audience, particularly if they were not currently marketing internationally.
My neighbor’s kid can do web pages	It’s slowly changing, but many people expect more for less with the development of their Web sites. In other words, they won’t blink at dropping $5000 for the design and printing of a thousand brochures, but they’ll go into Jim Carrey contortions when you throw that number in front of them for a Web site. The same people will painstakingly proofread their brochure several times before sending it to print, yet entrust their computer support technician to post the company’s mission statement on their Web site.The virtual nature of a Web site is probably the leading cause of its lower perceived value. You can’t touch a Web site, nor can you hand it out at a meeting, so business managers from the old school might believe they’ve paid for air, and therefore devote insufficient attention and resources to their Web projects. A good technical communicator can counter this misperception by pointing out the dynamic nature of the Web as a communication medium.Just as our clients must evaluate their customers’ needs in a Web site, Web developers must evaluate a business decision from a client’s perspective. There are fewer things more important to small businesses than return on investment. Thus, the first point that I try to make when facing cost-justification questions is that Web sites can reach larger audiences at less cost than print materials.Whereas printed promotion materials, such as fact sheets and brochures, are limited in their reach by mailing lists and print budgets, the reach of a Web site is virtually unlimited. And, because the vast number of Web site visitors will form their first impression of a company from its Web site, a captivating and effective site is paramount. Businesses must sometimes be reminded of this power, so that they allocate appropriate financial and human resources to their Web projects.Most technical communicators are strong in project coordination and management, and this makes them valuable resources to projects as complex as Web site development. They are skilled in planning and resource allocation, and this is precisely what a dynamic Web site needs. With the help of technical communicators, businesses can maximize their resources in the creation of an effective site.Another feature of Web sites, which isn’t always readily recognized, is the ease with which Web sites can be edited and appended. Though revising most print documents is a lengthy and expensive task, most Web sites can be updated with relative ease and minimal cost. Far too many companies don’t incorporate potential additions in the initial design of their Web site. They vary the appearance or layout of individual pages, or their directory structures are loose. As a result, as their Web sites grow, they grow increasingly disjointed.Technical communicators can step into these situations to help companies plot their Web strategy, including possible future additions. They can also help companies design an interface which is easily adaptable and one which will readily merge an expanding index of pages.Though, as previously mentioned, multimedia incorporation and specialty programming can adversely affect a site’s usability, there are circumstances in which the use of these elements increases the effectiveness of a site. In these situations, technical communicators can help businesses seamlessly incorporate elements, such as database searches and streaming video, through introductions of these elements and supporting text written to answer frequently asked questions.Finally, and in many cases, most importantly, technical communicators with a keen knowledge of search engine behavior can help businesses stand out in the competitive environment of Web search engines. With the prolific growth of the Web, small businesses with limited marketing budgets have a very difficult time getting noticed on the Web, and they are left to rely almost exclusively on Web searches. Because the effectiveness of Web sites in gaining search engine interest is tied to site design, technical communicators are poised to be valuable assets to smaller companies.Practices as simple as strategic word choice in meta tags, page titles and introductory text can greatly enhance a company’s prominence on the Web. These choices also make search results that point to the Web site more appealing. Few professionals are more adept at these practices than technical communicators. Technical communicators can also coordinate the site structure so that visitors entering any page of a Web site will understand the company and how to navigate the site.The best way to impress upon small business managers the dynamic nature of Web sites is to equip them with tools that track site traffic. Often, the larger Web hosting services will grant customers access to their logs through inexpensive software. Even it this isn’t an option, third-party services such as HitBox provide inexpensive, and many times free, solutions to traffic tracking.Business managers can learn a lot about how their Web sites are used, by viewing statistics in such categories as single-access pages and top paths through the site. A comparison of how visitors use the Web site to how companies intend visitors to use the Web site is particularly revealing. For example, if visitors are clicking from the opening page to a page with low potential for sales, while ignoring the main pages of the Web site, the site should be redesigned to better direct customers to the information that they company wants to give them.Technical communicators can help businesses revise an existing site based on the information they gather from a site tracking tool or they can use the tool to explain the choice of certain Web elements and to plan additions to the site. Again, a thorough understanding of document design, usability and use of the Web medium enhances the effectiveness of someone using these data to create or revise a Web site.
Summary	A wide variety of tools, from Excite’s community builders to the “Web in a Box” package touted by Tim Allen’s unemployed former co-star, have convinced many that anyone can build a Web site. The truth is, almost anyone CAN build a Web site, but it takes substantial skills to develop a GOOD Web site.Good Web site development requires a unique combination of skills, from graphic design and layout to copy writing. These skills are readily available in the form of Web development teams at advertising agencies and specialty firms; however, these teams are typically beyond the budgets of most small businesses. Therefore, they must rely on more reasonably priced independent contractors. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to find the right combination of skills in one person.Technical communicators, more than most any other group, are qualified to help businesses build effective Web sites. We possess fundamental knowledge of document dynamics, are skilled in writing and usability, and many of us have working knowledge of graphic design. In short, we’re the best overall value for a small business’s Web development budget.