Weaving a clear Website design

So you're thinking about hiring a new media company to design a Web presence for your organisation or perhaps you're considering an overhaul of your current site. Where do you start? The easy, if somewhat unhelpful, answer is, "it depends".

Unhelpful, because most companies seem to expect to be told what they want, without spending more than a brief moment considering what they are trying to achieve with a Website. For such a company, an answer which requires some input from it is not what it's looking for. It is hoping a Web company will do the thinking. If it goes to a good Web company and right now in Ireland, quantity rather than quality seems to be the rule - the team chosen to work on the company's site will try to winkle out the information needed to create a viable, attractive and functional Website.

Unfortunately, this is a time-consuming, directionless way to go about the job.

On the other hand, if as is often the case - the Web company is more than happy to design something for them without forcing them to the table to discuss, in great detail, the company, its goals, what it already knows about the Web, what it may want in a site and why, and other such basic information, then alarm bells should be going off.

So, back to the opening question. Where do you start? A small team should be assigned within the organisation to think about the following points:

determine the image the company wants to convey;

clearly establish your business objectives;

define the purpose of the site what should it do now; what might you like it to do in the future?;

could the site bring information (inquiries, orders, etc) to you, and convey information actively back to users? Could it be used as a communications channel in-house (an intranet?);

what company departments will be supported?;

how are competitors using the Web?;

fix a budget allowing for maintenance and further development.

One person should lead the project and work with a Web design company (designing by committee rarely works).

So how to choose a company? Very carefully. Come up with a short-list of likely candidates (a good way to do this is to find out who created some of the Irish sites you like).

Then give them an outline specification of what you'd like.

A good Web design firm should sit down with you, ask plenty of questions

and listen. Ask it to walk you through other sites it has designed. Who are its clients?

Unless you are a small company with limited needs, you will want a company which can show you working examples of client sites which incorporate utility

which means the ability to design and implement software applications at the site's "back end" (as opposed to the "front end", which is what you see on the screen).

Increasingly, sites are becoming dynamic "information infrastructures", as one Web company's business manager says.

But the majority of Web design companies do not have the technical capability of integrating, much less creating, the back end applications many companies may want.

Most companies are small start-ups with inexperienced designers who basically know a bit about HTML, the computer language in which Web pages are written.

They may try to sell you on small, flashy but pointless features such as blinking images or purposeless animations.

But you should expect the same level of professionalism, know-how and design expertise from a Web company that you would from a top graphic design or advertising studio.

So, you get what you pay for. If you want to present a professional image and you need a Website capable of sophisticated information management, then make sure your chosen Web company has: experienced, innovative graphic designers; a copywriter adept at writing for the Web; staff who understand business needs; site designers who can turn concepts into Website functions and capable programmers to handle or design applications.

Finally, your Web company should be able to give you a site design represented as an easy-to-understand map, which will spell out the site's hierarchy, how sections within the site inter-connect and the functionality for each section (what will go there and why).

And remember: if a Web design company cannot answer all your questions and explain the Web even if you know practically nothing about it then hire someone else.

Karlin Lillington is at klillington@irish- times.ie