Just a few years ago, having a corporate website was something special. The world has changed. Increasingly, a website is a necessary component in corporate marketing campaigns and communications efforts. Customers, suppliers, shareholders, and other stakeholders expect to have access to the corporate website where they can easily and effectively find critical information.

Creating value with a website has to do with business objectives and the way in which the site supports those objectives. As those business objectives change, what you should do to enhance website value must also change.

Things are much more direct when an organization aims to destroy website value. Here are six nearly universal ways to turn off visitors to any site.

Underline for Emphasis

Experienced web users expect that underlined text signals the presence of a hyperlink, in which users click on the underlined text and get taken to a linked page.

This was driven home to me while attending a recent presentation. The speaker had translated her PowerPoint foils to web pages. The physical setup required that someone else navigate through the web pages as she talked. This navigational assistant, who was an experienced web user, kept trying to click on underlined text. He thought that would lead to related material. But the speaker had underlined points she wanted to emphasize, not to link to related information. The navigational assistant and the audience were both frustrated.

Make Contact Difficult

The reason organizations have a website is because they want, or need, to communicate with visitors to the site. It always amazes me the number of websites that make it difficult for these visitors to contact the organization that is behind the site.

There's also the problem of unanswered email from the site. Last year, I was responsible for regularly published reviews of major Canadian websites. The process began by contacting the Webmaster; I didn't want to review a site just before a major change. Typically, the Webmaster would respond within a few days. In one case, I never did receive a response from the Webmaster.

Use Meaningless URLs

URL stands for Universal Resource Locator and it's the address that people must enter to get to a website. The technicians may understand that "www.bigco.com/CA_ON_TO_SS0600/Brb2795.html" really leads to the page describing the Big Red Ball that will be on sale in Toronto in June for $27.95, but almost no one else will leap to that conclusion.

People kept getting the URL wrong for my Institute (ecom.senecac.on.ca) because it didn't mean anything to people outside the Ontario college system. I paid for a second URL, SenecaInstitute.com, any now it's easy to tell someone else how to get to my Institute's home page.

Keep Page Content Low

Users expect that when they click on a link it will lead them to something meaningful. It's very frustrating to click, wait for an elaborate graphic image to download, and then discover that all you have is a pretty "Enter" button.

Faster web connections will reduce this problem. When everyone has high-speed Internet access from office, home, and on-the-road, little time will be wasted. But it will be some number of years before high-speed access is anywhere near universal. Maybe we are fortunate in Canada that such introductory pages can be used to indicate the preferred language of interaction.

Hide The Good Stuff

There seems to be an almost grocery-aisle mentality in the design of some websites. The visitor is required to click her way past pages that the Webmaster wants to emphasize in order to get to the pages that interest them. And with the use of frames it's possible to make it difficult for the user to go directly to those interesting pages.

This delay-tactic approach may encourage impulse buying in the grocery store, but it leads to frustration on a website. Too many sites seem blissfully unaware of which parts of their site are seen as being "the good stuff" when the normal log files allow the Webmaster to pinpoint the popular pages.

Put Design Above Content

For the vast majority of business websites, content must be king. Visitors arrive with a purpose in mind, which is directly linked to the site's content. Some consumer lifestyle websites are partial exceptions, but relatively few of these sites exist.

During website development, it's easy for the emphasis to shift to design. All of the development people already know the content. What can emerge from the process is an attractive shell that contains little substance. Visitors may be initially impressed, even executives reviewing the site for the first time may be fooled, but there is little reason for anyone to return. So keep content king.

This list is only a starting point for identifying ways in which website value can be destroyed. To keep this from happening, remember to: focus on the business reasons that the site was developed, view each aspect of the site in the light of those business objectives, and ruthlessly weed out those features that destroy website usefulness. With this approach, a website can be a powerful tool for creating corporate value.