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Selling on the Web
Not-for-profit organizations can use the Web to stay in touch with existing
stakeholders and identify new opportunities for serving them. Political parties want to
offer information about party positions on issues, recruit members, keep existing
members informed, and provide communication links to visitors who have questions
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about the party. All the major U.S. political parties have Web sites, and each year
candidates running for public office set up their own Web sites. In addition, political
organizations that are not affiliated with a specific party, such as the nonpartisan Center
for Responsive Politics, also accomplish similar goals with their Web presences.
W E BS I T EU S A B I L I T Y
Research indicates that few businesses accomplish all of their goals for their Web sites in
their current Web presences. Even sites that succeed in achieving most of these goals
often fail to provide sufficient interactive contact opportunities for site visitors.
In this section, you will learn how the Web is different from other ways in which
companies have communicated with their customers, suppliers, and employees in the
past. You will learn how companies can improve their Web presences by making their
sites accessible to more people and easier to use, and by making sure that their sites
encourage visitors to trust and even develop feelings of loyalty toward the organization
behind the Web site.
How the Web Is Different
Through years of trial, error, and research, firms have come to realize that doing business
online differs greatly from doing business in the physical world. When firms first started
creating Web sites in the mid-1990s, they often built simple sites that conveyed basic
information about their businesses. Few firms conducted any market research to see what
kinds of things potential visitors might want to obtain from these Web sites, and even
fewer considered what business infrastructure adjustments would be needed to service the
site. For example, few firms had e-mail address links on their sites. Those firms that did
include an e-mail link often understaffed the department responsible for answering
visitors’ e-mail messages. Thus, many site visitors sent e-mail messages that were never
answered.
This failure to understand how the Web is different from other presence-building
media continues to be an important reason that so many businesses do not achieve their
Web objectives. To learn more about this issue, see Jakob Nielsen’s classic Failure of
Corporate Websites page in the Web Links; the article was written in 1998, but still
accurately describes far too many Web sites. In revisiting the issue in 2009 (see Top 10
Information Architecture Mistakes), Nielsen found that a surprising number of Web sites still
contained the same kinds of architectural and navigational flaws that impair site visitors’
ability to find information.
Most Web sites that are designed to create an organization’s presence in the Web
medium include links to a fairly standard information set. The site should give the visitor
easy access to the organization’s history, a statement of objectives or mission statement,
information about products or services, financial information, and a way to communicate
with the organization. Sites achieve varying levels of success based largely on how they
offer this information. Presentation is important, but so is realizing that the Web is an
interactive medium. The Web gives even large companies the ability to engage in two-way,
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