First off, let me begin by saying thanks to anyone who reads these posts on my blog. That’s right, thanks to both of you.

So, the other day I was thinking about the Internet, and also, what an intranet is. It seems a lot of people don’t know really what an intranet is, or if they need one. So hopefully by the end of this blog post I’ve explained what one is, why some companies need them while others don’t, and what they should be used for, though there’s a lot more ideas than I could probably come up with in one sitting, and that’s why I believe in working with like-minded creative and business individuals in order to make something that works well for everyone. Unfortunately we all know not everyone will get the same benefit from any website, product or service that someone else would, no matter how hard you try to make that happen — thus the story of the committee and the camel.

To start, the thing we use all day long – the World Wide Web, runs on the Internet, which most people know. The network (Internet) that every Tom, Dick and Harry has access to to get to websites, ftp files, and so on, runs pretty much on an unprotected network that everyone has access to — thus the issue with sensitive data, and the need for secure (HTTPS) websites when doing things like paying bills on-line.  That’s one reason why corporations and governments started using intranets — secure networks that only their employees have access to, either from within their corporate offices, or from home by logging in with secure access via some sort of password and digital key FOB.

Little known to most of the public, the internet as we know it today was originally the first intranet, designed to allow universities and the government to send files back and forth as well as email each other, way before the Swedes came up with HTML and the idea of the World Wide Web. Yes, there was an internet before Al Gore invented it, though there is some evidence he did invent Bill Gates…

Turn to many years later, and you have everyone using the Internet — for email, getting on the web, sharing photos, transferring files, and even making phone calls.  So, companies and the governments needed a way to have email, file transferring, and sharing information not intended for the public away from the public. Thus the inTRAnet. Which even to this day I hear people in IT who should know the difference between that and the inTERnet continue to confuse. The question is, does your company need an intranet?

First, is your company less than 50 people? Than you really don’t need an intranet.
Does your company have a whole ton of people, spread out over a region in different offices? Then you do need an intranet.  Yes, I know that’s pretty basic math, and there are a whole lot of other reasons to have one, but that’s for you and your IT and business people to figure out.

So, among most of the reasons to have your own intranet would be:
1. Secure email solution
2. Posting of company information, including all the communications to the employees to keep them abreast of new things happening, how to get benefits and changes in those, upcoming meetings, videos of the CEO or President giving his quarterly speech, a company wide directory, and so on and so on. The point being is instead of mailing all this information to your employee’s homes, it’s all on your company intranet website, also known as an employee portal.
3. Secure file transfers to your servers.
4. Secure file transfers to each other.

And I could go on as more things come to me. Just remember that a good intranet website shouldn’t end up becoming a camel, and then you’ll have a great communications tool for you and your employees.

I’m going to keep this pretty short and simple. Any website should work once it’s launched into the real world, especially if you’re company is a multimillion dollar entity whose online image affects their own bottom dollar.

Case in Point: Sony Electronics. More to the point, there online job search, or careers section. There were a few jobs there I’m VERY interested in, so I pop on over, put in what I’m looking for, what state, what city, click Submit — nothing. No response. No turning wheels, no progress bar in the browser, Nada, zip, zilch.

Now, to be fair, I’m on a Mac. I tried Safari, then Firefox. Still nothing. My guess is they developed the site in Windows, tested in Windows, and left it at that. Which my second guess is they’re only looking to hire people who use Windows.

I’d like my friends, or those reading this, to try it on Windows and let me know if my assumption is true by going here: Sony Jobs. If it only works in IE, then I’m stumped. The positions are for designers – one is an associate Creative Director, another for a senior designer. I’m guessing there are more.  What stumps me is that the majority of people in web design, marketing design, advertising and so on, use Macs.

What this also tells me is they need way better web people who know that Windows users aren’t the only people using the web.  I used to work for the company that contracted with the County of San Diego on their website. When I came on, the requirements were to make the sites only compatible for IE 5.2 then eventually IE 6. So, any San Diegans who used Macs that needed County based services (like paying taxes online, getting property information, or checking on current votes during an election), were pretty much considered second class citizens. That is until enough complained to elected officials. Then the county sites became Mac friendly, in order for those officials not to lose the valuable votes.

Now if could only get big corporations to feel the same way about consumer’s dollars that elected officials feel about citizen’s votes when it comes to the web.

It seems these days everyone and their mother are making websites, blogging, Twittering, Facebooking, etc. I subscribe to the school of thought that although anyone can make a website, not everyone can make a great website, nor knows how to. There are a lot of tools that allow anyone to create a site, yet not everyone has the design sense — visually or usably, to make a site work well.

not everyone has the design sense — visually or usably, to make a site work well.

There are a few things every web designer should know when creating a site that they want actual people to use. This applies for not just the layout, or navigation, but graphics as well, and it has to do with the number 3 in this installment of Website Design.

The number 3 is important — so important that we as humans rely on it without realizing it. The Christian Faith knows it as the Holy Trinity; artists, designers, photographers know it as the Rule of Thirds; there’s the old saying “Third time’s a charm”, and so on. The example site I’m going to use hit it on the number 3, but when they went to the 4th revision, things didn’t go so well, and I’ll discuss what happened, and what one should avoid whenever working on a web site.

So, things that are important in website design with the number 3:

1: Navigation: Nothing should take more than 3 clicks to get to.

2. Visuals: Stick to the Rule of Thirds. If you don’t know it, Google it.

3. Put your most important and new stuff on the home page, and always keep content fresh. After all, no one returns to the grocery store if they have old fruit, do they?

First, the County of San Diego website, circa 1997. The first website where they gave some thought to the design. The site  did win 4th place for Best of the Web. There are 3 types of viewers the site needed to address: The citizens of the county, the employees of the county, and the businesses who did business with the county, also known as external entities, such as school districts, police agencies, foster programs and so on. In other words, things should be easy to access from the home page for anyone.

and one of the department pages. Not as pretty, but still easy to use and to the point:

Not more than a few years later, the County of San Diego decided it was time for a redesign. Here it is in the second revision of the site, circa 2002. The changes site wide- gray background, shared header that tied all the department sites together, and all the departments used the same left hand navigation menu structure. Information on department pages could be found in 3 clicks or less. The biggest design flaw- the only branding was the header, footer, and left nav. Each department had their own look and feel inside their respective content areas, which I’ll show in the next site design.

Third version of the County site, 2004. It was a new world in the web, new technologies came out, and the County decided to leverage a cool product called Oracle Portal for their home page. This allowed sections of the home page to be dynamically updated, being that each portal on it was it’s own entity.

The portal was user friendly, had a sharp design, services the public users needed to get to were easy to find, and there was always something new to see on the home page. The site won 1st place in the Digital Counties Survey among counties of 500,000 or more.  The site featured links to important things any of the 3 user types needed to get to right away. Need to pay property taxes? I t was there on the home page. Need to get your financial reports for your agency? The login for that was on the home page. Need to get employment info? That was on the home page as well, as well as other very useful info like traffic and weather.  Notice also the Rule of Thirds in the overall design as well as the header.

As cool as that was, departments still got their own look and feel, so branding wasn’t a super top priority:

The site kept this design for quite a while, until 2007 rolled around. The County was ready to move to a new design, something cutting-edge, a fresh look and feel, something better, another award winner. At that time, they had been using Documentum, a document management system, for all County paperwork, records, etc. Documentum had a tool called Web Publisher, that allowed websites to be created without knowing any HTML, or so it advertised itself as such. Everything was templates, all sites would have the same look and feel department to department, branding would finally be in unity. The County would save huge amounts of money by not needing their IT contractor’s web designers or developers, they could get content up right away instead of in a few hours, and so on.

They decided to go with a 3rd party, and expert in Documentum, to help develop the new site. For the design, they decided to let one of their interns create the look and feel, working with content managers from the media department. Needless to say, none of them had any real web design experience. The team (my team) was pretty much left out in the cold on this one. Sure, we had to fix and redo everything the vendor created, but had to stay with the chosen look and feel. Our team of experts weren’t allowed to help on the design, whether visuals or usability. Things that were easy to find on the home page went missing, or were buried 4, 5, 6 clicks away. Also, the home page wouldn’t fit onto a user’s screen without scrolling (at 1920*1200). To see it live, go to http://www.sdcounty.ca.gov.   Try and find property tax payments on the home screen without doing a search.

About a month ago, the customer complained the site was ugly, not easy to use, things were hard to find, they were getting a lot of complaints. They want a new website.

So, what should they do? My suggestion is go back to the team that won them the awards. I do believe they should make the site branded so all departments keep the general look and feel. However, by thinking about the new tech toy instead of usability, they lost something in the process.

EVERYONE knows what a rocket looks like. But if you’re not a  rocket scientist,  you don’t know what makes a rocket truly work.

Earlier I mentioned not everyone has design sense, and basically that although there are plenty of tools to make a website, not everyone is a natural born web designer. If you take a group of folks, put them together in a room and tell them to design a new rocket, who by the way have zero rocket skills, you would end up with something that looks like a rocket — pointy nose, some fins, a round cylindrical shape, and the area where the flames shoot out the bottom. EVERYONE knows what a rocket looks like. But if you’re not a rocket scientist, you don’t know what makes a rocket truly work.

Same goes for websites. Sure, we all know what one looks like. But the average user has no idea what is under the hood, or what it takes to make a very user friendly site. There’s professional designers who know how to design, there’s user experience people who know how people operate and use web sites, there’s information architects who figure out the best way to get from point a to point b, there’s the programmers who do more than work with templates…they make the templates and the rest of the site work based on the designer’s vision, and there’s QA people who test the site end to end to make sure it’s bug free before it’s shown to a customer, or launched to the public.

So, things to remember: Use the Rule of Thirds, make stuff easy to get to in 3 clicks or less, keep content fresh, don’t assume everyone knows good web design, know your audience, and anything else you can think of to make people want to use your site again and again.

Finally, if all else fails, hire a professional. They know what they’re doing.