The document discusses strategies for developing an effective website using the 7 Cs framework. The 7 Cs include: Charter (governance and stakeholders), Web Action Plan (timeframe and schedule), Guidance (vision and principles), Direction (goals and strategies), Management (projects and resources), User Experience (user interfaces and interactions), and Summary (essential design strategies). Each C provides focus areas and questions to consider to ensure the website fulfills its objectives. Effective design considers the context, content, community, communication, connection, commerce and customization needs of users. Proper implementation of these strategies helps create a cohesive, user-centric website.

1. Strategies for web development,
7 Cs framework

2. Components of the Strategy

3. The Charter (Who)
• Focus: Governance and Authority
– What group/person is the primary
“champion”?
– Who are the stakeholders?
– What group is responsible for each phase?
– Who will define success?

4. The Web Action Plan (When)
• Focus: Timeframe and Schedule
– What time period will this strategy cover?
– What are the development and consultation
steps?
– When will development of the next version
begin?

5. Guidance (Why)
• Focus: Vision and Principles
– Why will this work be undertaken? For
whom?
– What are the principles that guide the work?
– How are these principles prioritized?

6. Direction (What)
• Focus: Goals and Strategies
– What are the goals that will achieve the
vision?
– What strategies will lead to these goals?

7. Management (How)
• Focus: Projects and Resources
– How will the strategies be accomplished?
– What staff will be required for each?
– What funding is needed?

8. User Experience (Where)
• Focus: Interfaces and Interactions
– Who are our Web users?
– Where are they using the Web (home, work,
wireless)?
– What are their needs?
– Are their needs being met by our Web
experience?

9. Summary of Web Strategy
Development

10. Essential Web Design Strategies
• Responsive Design
• Use Software Prototyping
• The Team
• Versatility
• Customization
• Aware of the Marketplace
• Look for Inspiration
• Step Back
• Design from a Different Perspective
• Test and Validate

11. Implementing Strategic Design
• Establish your goals
• Identify your audience
• Determine your brand image
• Goal-driven design direction
• Measure results
• Kaizen

12. Measure results

13. Seven C’s of Website Design
• Context
• Content
• Community
• Communication
• Connection
• Commerce
• Customization

14. 7c’s of Website Design
Context: Sites’ layout and design
Content:
Text, pictures, sound and video, that
Webpages contain
Community:
The ways sites enable user to user
communication
Customization:
Site’s ability to self -tailor to different
users or to allow users to personalize the
site
Communication:
The ways sites enable site to user
commendation or two way communication
Connection: Degree site is linked to other sites.
Commerce:
Site’s capabilities to enable commercial
transaction

15. Context (look and feel): the “How”
of the site
• 2 main dimensions: Function and Aesthetics
• Function - site layout and functionality
– Section breakdown - the way the site is organized into sub-
categories
• make them clear, and customer focused
– Linking structures - navigation
• where am I?
• how do I get back to where I came from? (breadcrumbs)
– Navigation tools - search functionality and methods, browse
capability, site index/map
• Use terminology the customer can understand
• Make sure your search tool works - configure it
• Aesthetics - visual characteristics such as colours,
graphics, fonts etc

16. Content: the “What” of the site
• Text, pictures, sound and video
– both the type of content, and the media with which it is
delivered
• The offering mix: products, information, services etc
• The appeal mix: promotional and communications
messages
• The media mix: the multimedia elements included on
the site
– Be careful with adding too many multimedia elements that
require plug-ins unless you have good market research that
shows that your users expect it.
• Content type: time sensitive information versus
“evergreen” information
– Freshness keeps bringing customers back
– Archives provide a useful service to users
– Watch out for “What’s New” sections

17. Community
• Community: the way sites build relationships between
users. Strong community encourages people to
return to the website again and again
– Community can create attractive content (for free!)
– Web communities can make the user feel that they are
valued by the firm
– Community can satisfy needs not otherwise able to be
satisfied individually (eg. finding people)
• Common tools are message boards, customer
reviews, chat with special guests, corporate blogs,
members areas
• Other examples: Lands’ End “Shop with a Friend”,

18. Customization
• Customization is the site’s ability to self-
tailor to different users
– The way customization can be achieved is
divided roughly into 2 types (although
many sites use both)
• Personalization - preferences actively selected
by the user
• Tailoring by site - automatically generated
customization based on a user’s previous
behaviour, and the actions of other similar
users

19. Personalization
• Personalization is usually used to refer to
customization of a site by the user him or herself.
• Promotes stickiness and customer loyalty
• Once a user has selected preferences, they must be
saved and can then be accessed by use of
registration/log in.
• Examples of personalization:
– E-mail accounts or storage space
– Content and layout configurations - mytelus.com
– Software agents - can be configured to notify a user when an
item is in stock, or to act as an alert service
• Cookies are often used in tandem with
personalization, but they can identify only the
machine on which the cookie is stored, not the
individual person. Hence the need for log-in.

20. Tailoring by site
• The second type involves automatically
generated customization based on a user’s
previous behavior, and the actions of other
similar users
• Interface software dynamically publishes
different versions of the site in order to better
address users’ interests, habits, and needs.
– The technologies to achieve this include cookies,
and recommendation engines that use
collaborative filtering. This is all completely
automated, but can be improved by using active
user input.

21. Personalization/customization using a
combination of tools
• Amazon.com provides a very good example
of this combination of methods to customize
the user experience using collaborative
filtering and a recommendation engine
• Lands’ End - My Model (allows you to
configure a model to your body type and
appearance and try on clothes) and My
Personal Shopper (uses “Conjoint analysis” -
presents alternatives for selection)

22. Communication
• Communication refers to a firm’s dialogue with its
customers
– Dialogue can be one-way (broadcast) or two-way
(interactive)
• Broadcast communication
– Mass mailings (opt in only!)
– E-mail newsletter
– Content update notifications
• Interactive
– e-commerce dialog using email to exchange information re
orders etc
– Customer service - email or live chat
– User input - content, reviews, feedback etc

23. Connection: how does a firm connect
to other businesses?
• Links to other sites
• Outsourced content - eg. news feeds,
stock quotes, weather etc
• Affiliated sites - complementary
products/services etc

24. Some things that really damage Customer
Experience on a commerce site
• Badly implemented search
• Not telling people an item is out of stock
until late in the process
• Shipping cost not given until late in the
process
• Asking for personal information too early
in the process
• No contact information
• Can’t print properly

25. Webpage Layout
• Layout of web pages is very important
• Poor layout makes for -
– Difficult navigation
– Hard to locate information on page
– Visually unappealing

26. Tables, tables, tables!
• Use tables to lay out your pages!
• Make the table borders invisible
• A 2x2 table works well

27. Areas of a Web Page
Menu
Header
Content
Logo

28. A 2 x 2 Layout

29. Table within a table

30. Table within a table

31. Centered with three columns

32. Really complicated design!