Rob Hyodo

Smashing Magazine posted a nice article in their “How-To” section about some corporate website facts. I can’t begin to tell you how much of a reality check this article is. How many of these 10 truths can you relate to? Here’s the list and my personal experiences associated with each.

1. You Need A Separate Web Division: With limited resources at my company, I was the web division and  was part of the marketing team. You have to make do with resources you have, but I think having a separate web division would have helped greatly in any company I’ve ever worked for.

2. Managing Your Website Is A Full-Time Job: Yes! As part of the marketing team, I could only devote a part of my day to website management. Time devoted to this was sporadic, too, as certain times called for huge design overhauls. Other times called for attention to other marketing details, taking time away from website management.

3. Periodic Redesign Is Not Enough: True. We launched the website one year and a year later, we completely redesigned it; and it was only the homepage that got the treatment at that.  This is related to the first two points, but not being able to spend 100% of my time on design and implementation on the site let to slow, periodic redesigns.

4. Your Website Cannot Appeal To Everyone: One of the first corporate websites I worked on was very guilty of this. We didn’t want to exclude anyone. In my last job, we got a little better at this, but I could have done a better job at really honing in on a few key groups; music labels, movie studios, online retailers.

5. You Are Wasting Money On Social Networking: Social networking tools weren’t as abundant as they are today until I got to my last job. Still, the way the company was run felt like I couldn’t say anything without buttloads of approval, so I shied away from these tools. Any company I go into today as a web marketer would need to allow for social networking on a more personal level.

6. Your Website Is Not All About You: Agreed. At my last company, we had a pretty good handle on not allowing personal preferences get in the way too much. My original concepts were a little watered down the first time around, but the homepage redesign went rather unscathed.

7. You’re Not Getting Value From Your Web Team: I was lucky in my last design to have more freedom with the design than ever before. Not that I had complete control, but my suggestions were heard. It became more up to me. Earlier designs were a nightmare to get off the ground. See next…

8. Design By Committee Brings Death: OMG, how true is this!? If you’re a web designer, I’m certain you’ve been to a committee meeting discussing your mockups. Everyone gets to put in their two cents, slowly killing the original design. At the end, your boss says, “Ok, you have everyon’es feedback. Now make it happen!” Some ideas are great, but you get ten ideas and it’s likely more than a few won’t work well together.

9. A CMS Is Not A Silver Bullet: Agreed. A CMS should be a means, not an end, to your overall web strategy. Going in, I like to look at the limitations of a CMS and ensure that a particular CMS I use will fulfill what I need to accomplish.

10. You Have Too Much Content: I was once told to, “Get everything on there. That way, anyone wanting to know anything about us will have the inforamation they’re looking for.” Ugh, this can make a site read like a whitepaper; dry, overly technical and just plain boring. Website content should tap into the emotions of people, stating the most important points as concisely as possible. When it comes to corporate websites, I believe less is more.