Advice to Companies on Their World Wide Web Pages

Revised 7 December 1996.

This page was written by Thomas Engel, M.D. from the Department of Anesthesiology, Loma Linda University School of Medicine, Loma Linda, California. This page is hosted on the GASNet Anesthesiology Server.

Advice is listed in order of importance.

1. It is not possible to have too much technical information on your web pages.

2. Home Page: Put a short introduction to your company and your mission on your home (first) page. Separate advertising, image and other information on other pages.

3. Technical Information: At a minimum, put FAQ's (Frequently Asked Questions), specification sheets, bulletins and updates on your site. Even better, also include complete technical manuals in ADOBE Acrobat format.

4. Navigation: Make it easy to find information at your site. Use a hierarchical organization of pages and links. Top level should be your home page with the URL "http://www.yourcompany.com/", if possible. Make sure that links appear on your home page without scrolling on 640 x 480 screens and default browser font and style settings.

5. Accept feedback from users by Email. Put a mailto: link to your Email address on your pages. Forms based feedback is OK, if in addition to Email. Answer your Email with a person!

6. Consider creating tutorial "inservice" type materials in HTML format. Make it easy for people to learn practical information about how to use your product. Even more important, make it easy for people teach others how to use your product.

7. Avoid large pictures and backgrounds. Use alternate text tags for pictures. Consider organizing your site with a medium size (300 x 75 pixel) picture with company logo on your home page and small (150 x 40 pixel) picture on the next level pages, and no picture on lower level pages.

8. Forms based search can be valuable for large sites. This is less important than hierarchical organization described above.

9. Link to high level information sources outside your company such as GASNet. Make it easy to go elsewhere and people will visit you more often!

10. Personal information is OK. These pages should reflect the quality and diversity of your employees. These pages should be separate from official corporate communication and clearly identified with one page per employee. If you include marketing people, then also include technical people. These pages can be as valuable within your company as outside it. Let your employees revise their own pages and refer to them when they talk with others.