Technology Decisions

My insurance company actually is a full-service financial services company. Not only does it supply my insurance needs (at least homeowners and auto) but a multitude of other needs. My wife and I have self-directed IRAs, brokerage accounts, mutual funds, money market accounts, and even a credit card. All of these accounts are available online. I can log on to the companys site and access every single one of my accounts. I can make trades, change coverage, transfer fundsmost anything I need to do. And guess what? That site is not pretty. It doesnt have a 40-second Flash opening screen or beautiful graphics. It may have links to corporate information or officer biographies, but if it does, I dont know and I dont care. I use that Web site to manage my accounts and nothing else. It doesnt need to be elegant or stylish (in fact, its style is kind of what I call programmer ugly). What it does do is work very well. I can execute a trade or change a policy in minutes. And that is all I need to do.

Heres another example. My banks Web site, which has all the elegance of a Visual Basic 3 program, is even worse. It has tired old Web controls I have seen used over and over and over (kind of like the photo images you see used again and again by companies too poor or too cheap to pay for original artwork). The home page has about a dozen pathetic buttons that must provide links to somewhere. There is an always-out-of-focus picture of one of the branches. The site features a different branch every few months or so. I have no idea how I ever will use the vast bulk of that Web site (in fact, for all I know, all that stuff might not even exist). Why is that? Because the only reason I ever go to my banks site is to check on my balance or transfer funds or maybe to see what checks my wife wrote last week. Nothing else interests me.

Fine, So What?

The so what is both of these Web sites would be ripped to shreds by a Web or design consultant, and yet I find them incredibly useful. Too often we get caught up in form and forget about function. I am sure a lot of thought and study went into which 12 buttons live on my banks home page. I am sure each senior VP insisted on having his or her particular specialty featured in some way on that page. And why did they do that? Because we all know we must represent every facet of our organization on the Web site. Right? Of course.

The Web has opened up this weird window from the world into our organizations. Before the Web, we relied on the value of our products or services to say who we are. We could tweak that message with print, radio, or visual advertising, but that message was essentially limited. You could afford only so many television commercials or expect people to look at a certain number of print ads or billboards. The Internet has changed all that. It has given us the ability to expose any part of our corporate structure to the world in any way we choose. And that is where we get into trouble. Most organizations have distinct, disparate suborganizations or groups, each with its own identity crisis and agenda. The leaders of each group demand equal real estate on the Web, and we end up with a camel instead of a thoroughbred. You know the old adage about a camel being a horse designed by a committee. Most corporate Web sites reek of committee-ness. The only thing my bank really needs is a home page that instructs you to enter your username and password to view your accounts online. IMHO.

Why Cant You Be More Like Amazon?

Theres a good one. Amazon is thrown up in our collective faces as the Web site we should all strive to emulate. Why is that? What is so great about Amazon? I say there is nothing great about Amazon. Its a one-trick pony. If all you had to do was sell books, Web site design and maintenance would be a lot easier than it is now for the rest of us who answer to about 20 different interest groups within the enterprise. This is what I hear is good about Amazon:

Easy registration. Fine, all Amazon needs to capture is name, address, and credit cardno demogra-phics, no special interest or designation questions, no job title or other pertinent info your firm might want.

Easy to find what you want. Great, all you actually need to search is title or author. You are looking only for book titles here, not information.

Amazon is really a smart marketer. For instance, those e-mails you always are getting that say something like: As someone who is interested in dried flowers, we would like to recommend this new title. Yeah, thats useful. Three years ago I was knocking off a bunch of Christmas presents at once and bought half-a-dozen Martha Stewart cookbooks. Now, I am someone who is interested not only in cooking but in Martha Stewartand that presumably includes dried flowers.
Come on, the real reason people think Amazon is so wonderful is because they have used it enough times to feel comfortable with it. I personally find it very confusing. Amazon has branched out into virtually every retail market. It is no longer a purveyor of books. It is a purveyor of everything from toys to apparel. Anyway, why do we spend so much time admiring a business that rarely, if ever, shows a profit? Where I come from the bottom line plays a pretty big role in whats good and what isnt.

To Google or Not to Google?

I know you get this one. Why doesnt your Web site have a search engine like Google? Just what does that mean . . . a search engine like Google? Do your users want to be returned more than 100,000 hits when they type in variable annuity (or a quarter million if you leave out the quotes)? I suspect the answer is no. What your user really wants is some reasonable, efficient way to find out information about variable annuities and how to buy one without browsing through a long list of potential hits. (Though you might like to know when I searched for variable annuity on Amazon, I was returned one of my employers titles on the first page. Amazon must have a really good search engine ).

The point here once again is we are comfortable using Google and want to feel the same comfort level with the other Web sites we regularly use. That doesnt imply all sites need to have a Google-like search.

Web sites are by their very nature difficult to understand and navigate. We are given a small amount of space in which we must grab our users attention, retain that attention, and then direct them to somewhere else without confusing them. Hospital administrators figured out a long time ago people are not very good at intuitive thinking or following directions. Thats why they paint all those lines on the floor. Follow the green line to get to the cafeteria. That is what we need for Web site designnot fancy graphics but colored lines that lead us to where we need to be.

Its About Business,
Not Technology

Technology has made it so easy to create Web sites and Web pages we assume we must create large, comprehensive corporate Web sites that expose every possible facet of the enterprise. We rarely stop to take the time to ask ourselves what goal or mission we are trying to fulfill with our Web presence. Amazon has one goal: to take your money and, in exchange for that money, deliver a book to your front door. To accomplish that goal, it doesnt need a corporate vanity site with fancy staff bio-graphies and pictures. It doesnt need pictures of its corporate headquarters. It doesnt need shareholder information.

I get to chant my man-tra once again: There are no technology decisionsonly business decisions. Corporate Web strategy must be driven from the top down. Individual business units or groups always will err on the side of self-interest. Give and take among group managers is much like congressional bargainingIll support your Web stuff if you support mine. This is not the answer for good corporate Web sites. A disinterested executive committee is necessary to create a clear and concise corporate vision of how the Web will support the business. The sites goals and purpose, as well as realistically measurable metrics, must be defined. As technologists, we need to be part of that vision but only insofar as we can help promote the goals of the business units. When we see an emerging camel, we need to stand up and interrupt the process.