The importance of the Internet

The growth of the Internet in the last 20 years has been a global phenomenon which is ignored at one's peril. It is no longer only the multinational and large corporate organisations which use the Internet as part of their marketing mix. Indeed almost all smaller companies, organisations, societies, clubs, hotels, restaurants, pubs and even sole traders now have their own Web sites. Many companies have benefited from innovative and exciting eCommerce opportunities, bringing their product or service to a wider audience which conventional promotion and advertising techniques simply cannot reach. For a sole trader operating from home, a Web site can provide a particularly cost-effective means of bringing his service or product to the attention of potential customers locally, regionally, nationally or even around the world.

Typical Web site problems

However, there are many under-exploited opportunities and countless examples of poorly designed, inappropriate and badly maintained Web sites. For instance one finds commonly:

• over-elaborate design where the designer has let his creative genius run riot, to the detriment of clarity, site navigation and page loading time;
• the 'abandoned' site which carries a statement 'site last updated……' many months, if not years, ago;
• incorrect spelling and grammar, even on some of the most prestigious sites;
• garish colour schemes, lack of contrast between background and text;
• excessive variation of font types and text formatting;
• badly worded text and dreadful punctuation;
• incorrect or missing contact details;
• email links which don't function;
• total lack of Meta Content;
• poor quality graphics;
• missing Page Titles;
• missing images.
  

The list could continue but any regular Internet user will recognise some of these problems. Often the basic site design is good but the execution seems rushed and the overall result less than professional, even though the customer may have paid a considerable sum to an external, specialist designer.

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