We were recently invited to comment on two Web sites which, at first glance, looked as if there wasn’t much wrong with them. They were both blessed with attractive designs and appeared to be professionally created and executed. They presented their companies in a favorable light.
But digging into these sites beyond first glance was like turning dainty bed covers aside to discover dust balls under the bed. One Web site contained a number of small but nagging problems: a navigation color scheme that went awry, content in public view that should have remained private, viewable pages with the developer’s "put content here" instructions instead of real content.
The second site had a much more significant problem: It was flawlessly executed, but it said nothing. There was no information in the site explaining what the company did. The visitor was left guessing, and feeling uncomfortable about the entire experience.
Web sites can fall short of accomplishing their goals in a frightening number of ways. There may be too much unorganized information on them, making it difficult for users to access precisely what they want. The site might not be accomplishing the appropriate business goals and objectives. There may be, as in the second example above, too little information. Incomplete pages can be put up with the laudable expectation of “we’ll get back to them” -- but the reality is that, after launch, you don’t always manage to do so. Even active sites -- where new material is added periodically -- can suffer because the original navigation scheme isn’t followed, or pages such as the site map are not updated to reflect the changes.
In many ways, if you live long enough with a site, it’s like living with those dust balls, both the ones under the bed and the others that have moved out into plain view. You simply don’t see the flaws any more. It isn’t until you have guests over - or invite someone to your site to accomplish something that they can’t do - that you suddenly realize you have a problem.
Inviting an outside firm like IMA to perform a site audit is one way to address both the apparent and the hidden issues with your site head on. And because even well-maintained Web sites need tune-ups now and then, a periodic audit should be viewed like Spring Cleaning -- a good thing to plan to keep even the tidiest house looking fresh.
Even if you don't have the budget or the resolve to act on every issue uncovered in an audit, at least you'll know where the dust balls have taken up residence!
