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Analyst: Nicolas Bürki

Issue: What is the value of Web Site Design Best Practices for new Web site development?.

Response

Web design best practices serve primarily as a decision tool to reduce time for agreement on the new site design. Best practices allow the Web steering committee to explore proven and successful design options.

At this discovery stage, the value of best practices is to sensibilize the Web team about successful design practices. The sensibilization phase targets to eliminate the individual team member's visions, which deviate too radically from proven design implementations (for example: usage of animations on the home page or providing mainly information on the home page instead of linking to the information, see PracticeByte, "Common Mistakes: Home Page Design", Nicolas Bürki").

Once the majority of the team member - ideally everyone - buys into the acceptance of leveraging best practices for the new Web site, the next and final step consists of negotiating and agreeing on the various design options. During the negotiation phase, the Web team needs in many cases to compromise best practices. Rejecting best practices is not critical as long as the Web team understands the associated risk and is willing to accept it. Compromises dramatically reduce time to find agreement on site design. Especially, if an external and neutral facilitator assists the Web team to find compromises, several months lasting discussions can be successfully concluded within less than one session. Further, for new site development, a best practice workshop can even avoid to start such long internal debates.

Learn more about how we helped companies to close their internal discussions through our Design Best Practice Workshop and their quotes.

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