The most important mission for your web
site should be to build the user experience into an interactive one, much
like many of today’s facilities have other means by which to involve their
patrons. By building an interactive user experience blueprint for your site,
you will practically guarantee a successful site. And by making people feel
a part of your facility and helping them to interact with your brand, you
will keep a satisfied customer coming back for more on your site, much as
you want them to return to your facility.
Pre-Planning Stages -
Initial Ideas/Brainstorming
Visit sites that are some of your favorites and write down the features that
you like. Visit all of your competitor’s sites to see what field playing
level your site will need to be on. Write down all of their strong and weak
points. Write down all reasons why your organization should have a web site
and any advantages by having a web site. Also note all the ways a web site
could improve or streamline business processes and satisfy your customers.
Define User Tasks
Gather a team and discuss every task that a potential visitor may want to do
on your web site (find events, purchase tickets, get driving directions,
etc.). The initial focus of making an effective web site should be
determining the core set of tasks your web site must offer. The more your
web site meets your audience’s needs, the more successful your site will be.
User Research
Before you start a design, develop a user experience blueprint through
careful user research. Do analysis on your user demographics. Define all
types of users, user tasks, user Internet connectivity, user lifestyle and
more. This can be done through surveys and in-depth interviews.
Streamlining Tasks
Your next step in pre-planning should be noting all the ways to make
performing any of these tasks as seamless as possible. One example is the
Staples Center web site (www.staplescenter.com).
If you visit the site specifically to find information on an upcoming
concert and are in a hurry, you are immediately presented with an intro page
that lets you decide if you want a flash or non-flash version of the site.
Pressed for time, you view the non-flash version of the site (flash, though
more stylish, takes longer to download).
You are next presented with a menu page
with several clearly defined areas so there is no guesswork needed in
figuring out what might be behind any area. If you are looking for a concert
click on “Calendar” and you go to a web page that shows you two calendar
months and clearly codes all concert events so that you can easily find what
you are looking for. By color-coding all their events on their calendar
page, the Staples Center helps attendees find events quickly based on what
they are looking for. In addition to the color-coding, when you click on any
event you are given a link to purchase tickets.
For all areas of your site you will want to
match up related tasks, such as links to buy tickets. If you don’t have a
link to purchase tickets, the user may wander off the site and ultimately
forget to purchase tickets.
Another great example of streamlining tasks
is the seating chart application on the Madison Square Garden web site (www.thegarden.com).
When you click onto their site you will see the area “seating.” Click on
that and it brings up another window with an application designed to make
the task of finding the perfect seat as easily and smoothly as possible.
With their zoom tool you can drag a
 viewer
around the arena to find the section you want to sit in and then quickly
click on that section and get a picture of what the view looks like. They
have made this task so seamless you can view the arena and seating options
via any kind of event and instantly find multiple options within one minute.
The Garden’s seating chart tool may seem a
little too fancy and cost intensive for some budgets. If you are under a
tight budget and want something similar, you can use a digital camera to go
around the facility and take pictures of different locations. Then develop a
web page on your site that shows your seating map that links to the pictures
you have taken. For smaller venues this option might not be needed, but for
larger venues you definitely want to look at offering this feature on some
small or large scale. Keep in mind that a limited budget should not stop
you. Think creatively about how you can develop an effective site for your
customers within your means.
Audiences to Your Site
Whether you are running a site where people can see a venue for a concert or
play, or to see a tradeshow layout, you will have a core set of four
distinct audiences you must cater your site for:
Attendees
Visitors looking to find information about your facility (parking,
directions, upcoming events, tours, etc.).
Exhibitors/Performers
This group will primarily use your site to quickly locate contact
information or access a private area to perform business. There will
probably not be many tasks designed on your site specific to them, but you
should still factor in your development any related tasks that this group
may want to utilize.
Sponsors
Many sites overlook sponsors in the site development. Look at all pages of
your site to figure out where to incorporate existing sponsors and ways to
find new sponsors (many of which you may not have looked for in traditional
offline marketing).
The Web Surfer
This will be the visitor who was surfing the Internet and came across your
site. You never really should design your site around this type of user, but
should consider how easy it is for someone new to learn about your facility
and to gather the most basic information with as much ease as possible.
The Main Page of Your Site
The main page of your site will give visitors a first impression. You will
have about 10 seconds to capture their attention in comprehending your site
and what is available, so make your main page as concise as possible. You
may want to highlight with minimal use of graphics and text all related
events for that week or month (NextStage is a great example of a web site
that does this at www.nextstage.com).
Keep Number of Clicks Concise
You want to keep the number of clicks on your site as concise as possible
for users to perform tasks and to find information. For events at your
facility happening within the next couple of days, having a link directly to
it off your main page saves your visitors anywhere from 2-5 clicks. So,
instead of them having to go to your site and click on “Events” and then to
“Month of August” and then to “Their Desired Event,” they can go and see
that week’s listed events and then click to go to its information (saving
them 2-5 clicks and about 30 seconds to two minutes of time). Factor in the
hot areas of your site for any given timeframe and keep the number of clicks
for that information to a minimum.
Making it
Effective for Larger Facilities
There are many ways larger facilities can make it easy for visitors to their
sites to find what they are looking for. The University of California, Davis
(www.ucdavis.edu) is a great example of
a large site that makes it easy to find information in a number of ways.
They have clearly labeled areas, a keyword search to quickly find
information, and even a text version of their site (to find information
quickly without waiting for graphics to load). Most information is within
2-3 clicks, including application status for any of their schools.
Novice and
Advanced Users
Each area of The Hong Kong Convention Center (www.hkcec.com.hk)
web site has minimal and concise text and is designed for both novice users
and advanced. Frequent visitors can find information quickly without getting
caught in a design that is only usable for the novice. New users can also
follow the design and find information with helping text throughout each web
page that guides and points out how to use the site features, such as the
detailed maps of the facility. You can look at maps of any level or area and
on some parts of the map you can get even more detailed information by
clicking on color-coded areas.
Be Innovative
Within
Your Means and Budget
Utilize every available resource to make your site more effective and never
be complacent. Keep in mind that utilizing resources and spending money is
not the same thing; so spending money isn’t the key. Pooling your available
resources to make the best site you can offer is the key. A good web site is
continually and actively evolving. You don’t have to have a bank account as
large as Mark Cuban to have an effective web site nor do you have to be some
hip young genius that has been working on computers since he/she was
five-years-old.
Learn about your audience day in and day
out, with a constant ear to the ground for feedback. The Internet is a new
evolving media where “best practices” aren’t always the governing factors
for what works. As the Internet evolves, the most effective web sites will
be those continually focused on crafting the best online experience possible
for their customers.
Blake Ethridge is a web design
consultant for Trendec Corporation, a business and technology consulting
firm based in Carrollton, Texas. |
Back to Facility Manager