|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
The Fundamentals of Professional Web Sites for Business Professionals |
|||
|
This Week’s: Features Step-by-Step: We Don't Want Your Kind Around Here - Alienating Visitors On Focus: Writers — Part 4 Reviews A Home for Writers - WriterSpace.com Call Me an Idiot! - The Complete Idiot's Guide to Online Marketing Techniques |
|
Features
Step-by-Step: We Don't Want Your Kind Around Here - Alienating VisitorsImagine a store with a guard at the door who sees you pull up in a Chevy and waves you off with an abrupt, "Go way. We don't allow Chevrolets in the parking lot." By limiting access to specific browsers, operating systems, plugins, java and javacsript-enabling, monitors or other sspecifications, a number of web sites essentially tell potential customers, "Go away. We don't want your kind here." I've heard the argument that the majority of web visitors use Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) on Windows machines. In some industries, the majority use specifically IE 5 by a small percentage. And therefore, it only makes good business sense to focus on the majority of browser clients. I could make the same argument that since the majority of potential customers are Caucasian with brown hair, a business should turn away all other potential customers — and most people would be suitably offended. Besides in browser preference cases, there is still a significant minority of potential customers using other browsers, browsers versions and operating systems. Turning away potential business and making technical demands on the visitor is bad business practice. It indicates an incompetence on the part of the web designer and coder. Good web design is not dependent on a specific browser or web technology to communicate your message. Cull visitors by your content, not your designer's prejudices or inexperience. There's a place for whiz-bang special effects, but it's not the home page or any page that has your most critical information (such as product details, contact information or price lists). If you want to include dependent media (e.g., Flash, video), offer it as an option that can be accessed by clicking on a link or button. It should be the visitors choice, not your graphics designer's or web coder's demand. Any critical information offered in a dependent format, should also be offered in an independent format. In other words, if the details about your product or services, contact information or other basic information is offered in a Flash 4 presentation, then it should also be offered in a standard HTML format as well. Browser, operating system and plugin dependencies increase your costs not only in development time, but in lost goodwill, lost visitors who never return and angry visitors emailing to complain. Do you really think it's more important that the graphics designer can control the exact positioning of a paragraph or snag a new job by learning Flash 5? Do you really want to explain to an angry customer that he or she can't order your product directly because your web coder doesn't know how to maintain persistent state without a cookie or to code a form that isn't dependent upon javascript validation on a Windows98 machine? And when they whine about how it can't be done, just say "If Amazon can do it, why can't you?" And just in case you're still not convinced, consider reports that Microsoft is not even going to be offering the same browser client in its various versions of Whistler, the new OS family being unveiled later in 2001. Suddenly, the browser features available on a Microsoft OS-based computer, will differ from machine to machine. Join the web site independence movement today! Find out how to arrange an independent consultation or a workshop for your conference or organization on this or any other Internet-related topic. Copyright ©1995-2001 Carolyn E. Cooper. All rights reserved. |
|
|
