What Makes a Good Business Website?
 

PelicanParts seems to be a really good website. It provides the ability to do research, buy parts seek advise. Not all companies are set up like this. What are the criteria for a good website that would generate interest and eventually sales?

I have my own ideas but I want to see if I am in tune or out of bounds. So, what makes a good website for a business?

You have it in a nutshell. THe site should take into consideration the needs of the potential customer, ranging from broad descriptive info to more detailed. It should be easy to use, as intuitive as possible, and transparent. Nothing annoys me more than a site that has nothing but "here it is, your cart is empty, buy now". Then again, I am detail oriented and in more than one case, wrote and submitted modifications to specific websites. Some were even adopted.

Too funny, I have done that as well. I have been frustrated enough to mock up site navigation and send it via website feedback.

I think the key to a good business website is customer research... find out what your customers actually want to do online. Do they want support content, product info & ordering capability, information on previous projects?

It's way too easy to have a marketing-driven website that will go unused because of bad content, unclear navigation and other useability problems.

IMO, pelicanparts.com succeeds because Wayne is very aware of how his customers use this site.

What about a service company that doesn't sell items but rather intellectual material?

Personally, I'd start by looking at the competition and seeing what they "do" online. There is even value in doing usability testing on your competitor's website before you even begin to draft up yours. This can give you a perspective on what your customers will be looking for, and how they want to see information organized. Great stuff to know BEFORE you start designing a website.

Take a peek at Forrester research or a similar company...if you're starting off as a small fry, it's nice to benefit from the research of analogous business models :)

Grant - dod you work for them? Overall I like the site, my 2c...

Forrester Research - I like their site. I wish it had a better defined front page that stated what they do - the customer log-in is not intuative and the link pops you into the "My Forrester" page and not the company info page (which visually is a little less exciting) other than that it is rich with info and looks like a great site and a great company.

Whatever you do, for God's sake no or minimal Flash (buttons and eye candy stuff is OK). A few tests to determine if your web designer needs to be strangled with a mouse cord:

1) the back button must work as expected everywhere on the site at all times
2) if you look in your history folder, you should see where you've been on the site and be able to click and go right back there
3) the site should open and scale normally, not force a new window and then only display in one size
4) when you control + mouse wheel, the text should scale but the page must maintain attractive proportions

Lots of crappy design out there, but it's completely inexcusable for a business-to-business web site.

Here's a good example. Contrast nike.com with nikebiz.com. One's for teenagers, the other is for investors.

One more thing - adhere to standards. Don't do something that only IE or some other browser supports, target *everything*. I should be able to get all I need/want using a text only browser like links or lynx

Do:

-Have plenty of relevant content and pertinent information
-Have good links and descriptions of your products & services
-Use an appealing color palette and sensible tab or frame-based layout
-Check your site on different browsers to make sure it still works
-Check your site at varying screen resolutions
-Use graphics sensibly to emphasize and reinforce the content (e.g. pictures of products).
-Keep it current and update it regularly

Don't:
-Use flash, animations, ding-dongs or (for God's sakes) those annoying "voice introductions" that some sites use.
-Use pop ups. Ever.
-Use scripting except sparingly and as necessary
-Bury contact information in sub-pages; put it where it makes sense in a frame or on the home page
-Make the mistake of thinking a web page is a "set it and forget it " affair - make sure someone keeps tabs on it and updates it occasionally.

bikini girls neatly integrated. it's a prooven way to get mundo hits..

All great ideas - so what I'm understanding here is to engineer the site for:

- User Friendliness
- Business Applicablity
- Simple to Complex (rich) info mining
- Develop the site as a $$$ generator as well as a demograph mine

Oh ya, have hot kissing lesbos and pics of great car stunts...

I went to nike.com and all I saw was a blank page.
That's probably because I use Firefox w/o scripts, but there was no message or alternative.