Notes from Trends '98 Conference
Orlando, Florida, October 2, 1998

Online Information Development and Delivery:
How to Create a Web-Based Navigation Service to Alleviate Cyberstress

Jerry Fogle, Jr.
Webmaster of Information Products Group at NCR, Columbia, SC

• The most valuable commodity known to man [sic for humankind] is information.
• Information lets employees make the right decisions.
• Web-based navigation services deliver the right information, at the right place, at the right time, and in the right format.
• E-mail responses from users of online information systems yielded two key user needs:
   
• Serious users (as opposed to "Web surfers") don't want graphics, just the information.
• People still want to print. It's important to make this a usable feature. Use of excessive layers and "tunneling" in Web site construction defeats printability by creating too many separate files. On the other hand, endless scrolling of one long file runs afoul of the "three clicks max" theory of user impatience. Like everything else, it's a tradeoff. As Aldous Huxley once said, "You pays your money, and you takes your choice."
• Steps in developing a Web-based navigation service:
   
• Base the decision to build a Web site on research; it's critical to identify the customers and know their needs.
• Relate tasks to users and develop measurable performance objectives for users (e.g., most users won't tolerate more than 3 clicks to get to a given piece of information).
• "Chunk" information for usability.
• Never lose sight of the users' platforms... to a considerable extent, you have to work to the "lowest common denominator" in terms of hardware/software capability, or you risk losing part of your clientele.
• Deliver information from a controlled database.
• Exploit color contrasts to add usability to information.
• Never, never bypass user testing!
• Video and audio streaming are special tools that can be used to good advantage in making information useful.
• Cost benefit analysis: To sell online tools, it's important to quantify the cost savings, both short- and long-term.
• It's important to construct a paper prototype of a Web site architecture before constructing the site.
• For Web site construction guidelines, the presenter recommended the book Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, by Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville.
• Announcing the availability of a new Web site is an important part of getting it off the ground. You have to advertise.
• Key steps in site maintenance:
   
• Check links frequently. Nothing's more frustrating to users than dead links.
• Track usage trends (be sure to have the server log-on visits)
• Respond to user feedback promptly.
• To acquire a package that monitors the currency of Web site data as it downloads, check out Alexa.