If you have been web-surfing lately you will have experienced some pretty frustrating web sites. You log on and up comes a home page with 100 graphics and animations that takes forever to download. One web site I visited recently had a full screen image of smiling people and the company name. You had to click on the "Welcome" graphic to get to the next menu.  I burrowed down pages extolling the virtues of the company until I discovered there was no information on actually using the company services and how much their services cost.

Fast versus Expensive

The more fancy the graphics and animation, the more the site costs and the longer it takes to download. Seeing the graphics and animations for the first time might be entertaining but if you are visiting the site on a regular basis - for business - the graphics get old much faster than they can download.

Let's face it, as a visitor to a business web site you want to get in, get the info you need and get back to work as fast as possible. You don't need dancing, blinking and twirling glitter, you need facts, prices, and simplicity of ordering. 

Graphics are essential for buying or selling products, unless your trading partners already know what the product looks like. When your site does need graphics, their size and quality should match the need. One helpful policy is to limit graphics at first, perhaps using thumbnail images that download quickly, and save the higher resolution, larger graphics once the buyer has located the correct item.  You can see examples of this on the TransPacific Property site. Graphics are minimal on the first page. Thumbnails show the general aspect of the properties for sale on menu pages, and when the visitor clicks on the thumbnail of interest the next level starts getting more graphics intensive, finally ending up with some fairly sophisticated presentations ( www.transpacificproperty.com/casa.html ).

Pages that use the latest "dynamic hypertext markup language" or Java script can be very impressive, but can also be be pathetically slow to load compared to simple text pages. Older browsers can't read them and even the newer browsers can fail to operate properly. 

Pages using scripts and even pages using frames don't always "save" or print out correctly. In your goal to make your CyberSuite as useful as possible, it pays to stick to the least complicated text-based sites with the maximum amount of information that is useful to your partners. On this site, for example, our page layout is done with a simple table format and we use just one small graphic on all the pages (once you download this to your computer on the first page, your computer uses it again for subsequent pages).

Video and chat rooms can facilitate business and we will be helping our clients make the most of this technology in the near future.

What, exactly, will visitors or trading partners need to do on your web site? If it is not of significant value to them, it does not need to be on the site. They don't need to read about the fabulous qualities of the company or its management. Right now you are reading this because you want info on how to set up YOUR site to conduct YOUR business. Right? The most common mistake on the Internet is  companies wanting to tell the world how great they are. People want the services or products of the company, not a glossy presentation of the company (unless the site is trying to sell the company itself). You might want to have a separate section of the site with your credentials, but the basic, underlying design of your site should be to make it as easy as possible for the visitor to do whatever it is you want the visitor to do - such as closing a deal.

When you begin to think about what you want on your site, it helps to pretend you are the visitor. What is it you, as a visitor, want to accomplish on the site? If the object of the site is to wholesale furniture, you will be a known and trusted distributor that has been to the website many times. What do you want to get in the way of product information? How quick and easy is it to place your order or view the most recent new products? The site must facilitate this process. And surprisingly, this turns out to be the least expensive way to design a web site.  

e-mail can facilitate a great many e-business activities. One major benefit of e-mail is that you can encrypt your messages so nobody but the person getting the email can read it and that person can be absolutely sure that you sent the email. If you have not found out about PGP encryption yet, visit the PGP web site. U.S. residents can download the PGP program from www.PGP.com and people in other countries can download from www.PGPi.org .

We will be adding more to this section on design shortly. Meanwhile, one of the great sites for learning about getting people to your CyberSuite and keeping them there is Deadlock Design. Jim's tips are tops.