Wide Web For Tech Managers: Views You Can Use

There's lots of useful content on the Web for IS managers. You just have to know where to look for it.

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By Edward Cone
Issue date: April 1, 1996

Roch Smith Jr., President of The Wire, a local online service and Internet access provider in Greensboro, N.C., recently went shopping for some frame relay access devices (FRADs) on the World Wide Web. His search quickly demonstrated the power of the Web as an IS information resource and revealed some of the common pitfalls for Web desi gners and users.

"This is good," Smith said as he clicked through Motorola Inc.'s Web site to review frame relay products. He found Motorola's home page spare and efficient, with lots of text, one small image, a simple, black Motorola logo at the top, and a clear path to follow for additional information. Smith saw just where he wanted to go on the site, and he got what he expected when he arrived.

But Smith was less impressed with Cisco Systems Inc.'s site, which required him to click through three screens before delivering anything useful. It got worse. Smith clicked on what appeared to be the most likely link for FRAD data, only to wait for a drawing of a space station to download before getting a look at Cisco's product and service links.

"The first page offers a link labeled 'Which button do I choose?' as one of your earliest options," Smith explains, recalling an unhelpful image map. "That's one definition of a hard-to-read Web site."

C hristopher Roberts, man- ager of business communication technology at pharmaceuticals maker Eli Lilly and Co. in Indianapolis, isn't partial to fancy sites, either. "I don't go into the Net to be entertained," Roberts says. "I don't have time for that. I go in to get data and get it quick. I like to have information shared in a respectful way, not to sit through some art director's idea of how to package it."

Roberts, who has a background in video production, says Web designers often seem to use "gizmos and gadgets" to cover weaknesses in their design. "The sexiest-looking home page is not the goal," he contends. "You don't have to make it boring, just package it appropriately."

Roberts and Smith have discovered what many IS managers are learning about the Web: There's some incredibly useful information out there, but it can be hard to find among all the garbage.
Also, defining a good Web page is tricky. One person's idea of quality may b e another's version of wasted server space.

Pages can work in different ways for different users. A vendor such as Sun Microsystems, for example, benefits from outfitting its site with hip graphics, because it's in the business of making the Web a better-looking place. For another content provider-a government agency, for example-snazzy graphics might seem inappropriate, to say the least.

Cool Not Required
For most on-the-job IS staffers, it's fair to say that impressive Web sites are characterized by a fast download and logical hierarchy of product and service information. Cool graphics and links to obscure or esoteric sites aren't needed. Neither are marketing fluff or extraneous corporate background.

Figuring out the most likely sources for decent Web sites isn't easy. Useful sites are maintained by vendors, educational, publishing, and consulting concerns, even individuals-but all those groups produce some pretty sorry sites, too.

Waiting for fancy graphics t o download remains the biggest waste of time on the Web. It's especially infuriating when the images add nothing useful. Lots of users, even IS folks in large corporations, still use 14.4-Kbps modems, local dial-up access-providers, and not-quite-the-latest versions of Netscape's Navigator Web browser.

"We found that a lot of IS people are coming in on America Online and using slower modems," says Harry Cardile, head of directory services at Technology Partners Inc., an outsourcing consulting firm in Houston that runs a Web site. "So, as an accommodation to the marketplace, our most recent upgrade is less graphics-oriented than it used to be. We don't want to strip it down completely-most companies will be getting their people up to speed over the next six months-but we need it to be accessible now."

3Com Corp., the Santa Clara, Calif., networking company, also has toned down the graphics on its home page, which gets some 40,000 hits a week.

"We asked our us ers-customers, resellers, and people in search of financial information-what they wanted, and what they said was to downsize the graphics," says Marianne Cohn, 3Com's manager of marketing publications and electronic media. "We want to strike the happy medium between eye-popping graphics and reasonable download time. We're designing the pages to talk directly to IS people who need information quickly."

Problems with speed and compatibility get worse outside the United States-a headache for a supposedly global service like the Internet. "Technological differences and an adequate focus on user-friendliness are overlooked by several IS-oriented sites," says Yogesh Malhotra, a consultant and doctoral candidate at the University of Pittsburgh's Katz School of Business.

Malhotra, who maintains a rich and idiosyncratic Web site called A Business Researcher's Interests, points out that 9,600 bps-and slower-modems and monochrome displays are still common in many parts of the w orld. With that technology, he adds, "backgrounds and textures might appear really awful, blinking text can be invisible, and multilevel image-maps really slow access."

Many IS-oriented Web sites are available in text-only versions, solving some of the graphics problems without making things too dull for those using zippier equipment. But there is more to a well-designed site than fast downloadability. Information also needs to be arranged in a logical, easy-to-reach manner. A search function is another must for an easy-to-use page.

Once you know what to look for, of course, you can create a Web bookmark and go straight to it. No matter how obscure or clear they may be, icons don't matter when you've been to a site a couple of times. But the front door, the Name-Of-Your-Company.com page, should be concise and quick to use-and that means a good information hierarchy.

"We designed our page with a simple structure that is logical to a person from outside the company, " says Dava Lugo, Internet project manager at mainframe maker Amdahl Corp. in Sunnyvale, Calif. "We chose not to present things just as lines of business, which is our internal structure, but more from the customer's point of view."

Companies can also use their Web sites to disseminate news. Microsoft made good use of its Web page layout this winter by posting a newsflash on a virus afflicting Windows 95. The warning was one of the first items to download, positioned so that nobody would miss it.

Off The Mark
But an efficient design doesn't help much if it takes you nowhere special. Look at the lean-and-mean home page for applications software maker SAP AG. It's clear and quick, but the successive product pages are full of soft information and slow, hard-to-read graphics.

In contrast, there's the marketing-oriented slant taken by companies like Sybase, which is so proud of sponsoring a tennis tournament that its page includes an image of Andre Agassi whacking a ball. That's great for critiquing your backhand, but doesn't offer much in the way of database support.
Not all product information is that useful, either. Hewlett-Packard, which clutters its information-rich site with cutesy cartoon graphics, tells you that the Vectra VL series 3 PC offers "leading Pentium/PCI performance at an affordable price"-yet no prices are listed.

A text-heavy page with quick product links, like the offering from U.S. Robotics, a maker of dial-up access products, is preferable to a page that's flashy but useless. But good graphics and layout are important, too. Compare the clean, sensible page provided by the technology advisory firm Gartner Group Inc. with the dull Yankee Group Inc. site, or the site maintained by the Society of Information Managers. All three offer useful resources, but Gartner's is easiest on the eyes.

Users and site managers are still figuring out what works best for IS-oriented Web pages. Many of today's problems will be forgo tten as adequate technology penetrates the market. Others will be solved as more standard page formats emerge. In the meantime, there are plenty of Web pages out there of use to IS managers-and plenty of others that need improving.

See related story " Digital Leads The Way For Corporate Web Sites " and for a list of IS-oriented Web sites see " What's Worth Clicking On--And What's Not "

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