Small business website usability

Question

Coming from a mostly corporate background, I've found that an internal web application requires two things: usability and functionality. The former is my own rule - make it easy and fast to get to the functionality. The latter is a requirement of the user. Keeping these two things close to mind has served me well in creating several very successful applications.

Recently I've been drawn into the public world by being asked to create several web sites for small businesses. I'm happy to have these opportunities, but I'm afraid I have a hard time switching mindsets from creating something useful to something that attracts and promotes business. Attractiveness was usually an afterthought in the corporate atmosphere.

In order to wrap my mind around the changes I need in order to be success at my new ventures, I keep asking myself the following:

• What are the differences between building for functionality and for building to attract business?
• How can I design something decorative that still packs a punch as far as information?
• How much should I let the attractiveness detract from my typical plain and simple usable layout?

All your answers are important to me, but since I can only accept one, kindly tell me what you think is the most important aspect to designing a successful small business website to attract business.

Answer 1

I was in your shoes, and learned many lessons. Of course, situations vary, depending on the goal and nature of the business.

Be sure to educate your client about iterations and the whole development process. In a small business, people don't have experience dealing with IT, new systems, and software development.

Start small. A handful of pages. Be sure to get the functionality first and create prototypes using plain HTML.

Present them, and explain that they are prototypes, and you want to be sure to the the functionality and flow right. Get a signed approval from the business.

Let a graphic designer to work with the client using your HTML skeleton, and then work on making sure that the pretty site provides the required functionality. Again, get signed approval, and provide an estimate.

Define the scope: communicate that nothing that is not in the current prototype, functionality, or design (that is, last minute changes) will require an additional estimate in time and cost.

Finally, be ready to help your customer to provide the content. Their main focus, understandably, is their business, not writing stuff.

That will avoid you headaches, give you a good reputation, and avoid the bankruptcy of your business.

Answer 2

Well, usually smaller businesses don't deliver to much information about their business on their website. Usually it should be fancy enough to show that the company which the website represents is decent and organized enough to set up a site like the biggest competitors can.

This results in a drawback of usability, because the graphic artist might create a design which attractive to the eye but makes the website less usable.

I recommend to keep the design important, follow the trends, but keep the expected level of usability. You must have a clear, easy-to-use menu, readable areas for text and today it also expected viewable on touch-devices (no more rollover menus). If you keep those in mind, design and usability can be good friends :)

Answer 3

Check out this blog/website:

http://www.uxbooth.com/

You can find some nice articles there and good design examples that should get you started.

Answer 4

I'd say this is a good question for graphic designers. All I can really say is you have to design the site based on your target demographic. You must clearly communicate the purpose of your product.

Answer 5

Bug free. Fast and handles session / windows without giving the user an headache.