Important Design Tip when developing a company website.

Some things that has been bugging me for quite some time concerning some of the websites that I surf that belong to companies in Botswana are:

• the lack of a clear message of what the website is all about
• who are the target audience for that website?
• lack of professional appeal in such websites.

Take for instance, http://www.botsnet.bw/, (no malice intended) the website for a major ISP in the country, the website just doesn’t match the stature of the company it belongs to; It looks like somebody got over-excited with jeans and flash animations; making the website very un-usable and unwelcoming to say the least.

botsnet homepage

Sometimes, it’s easy to blame the web designers/developers for the awful websites we so often come across, especially here in Botswana but something that I have realised is that, more often than not, the owners(companies) of such websites are as much to blame as the people that designed the website.

Many are times, clients (for web designers) forget that when you set up a business or company website, you should really forget about what you like but focus on “what the visitors to your website will be looking for” when they visit your website.

So if you’re a business owner and are looking to get a website for your business; put yourself into your customer’s shoes, and just ask yourself,

what information do my customers to see when they come to my website? There’s actually no harm in asking them, give them a ring, drop them an email, tell them that, you setting up a website for your company and you’d like to know what they’d like to see in that website.

Remember, your company website may belong to your company or yourself but it’s of no use to if it does not add any value to your business in terms of your interaction with your customers. It just becomes like a gigantic trophy that you can’t use for anything except to gaze at it and relive the memories when you won it.