In the course of setting up this site, I have visited many SCADA related web pages set up by companies and individuals around the world. The standard of these pages varies enormously. Some companies get good value from the money they spend setting up their web pages. Some pages are obviously set up by enthusiastic individuals, but while they may contain a lot of relevant information, are frustratingly difficult to navigate around. There are some appalling examples of web page design, and this is not normally to do with the technical content of the page.

There are many resources on the web which tell you all about the graphic design, page layout, style and so on. You should make the most of these if your page is a DIY effort. But if the page is to be a key corporate communications media to your customers, consider getting professionals to do it. It shows.

Does your web site contain your company name and logo (on every page)? You would be surprised how many don't.

Does your web site have a page which contains contact information for your company. Street address, phone, fax, email contacts as a minimum? There ARE a lot of pages which contain no contact information at all!

Is there a link to this contact information in a prominent place on every page? There is no point in this information being impossible to locate. What is the point of having a web page if the person still can't contact you?

Does your site say exactly what products and services your company provides? It is amazing that some well presented sites don't actually say what the company does. Don't assume that because the person surfed to your pages, they know anything about you. Large companies are normally the worst offenders. A small concise paragraph stating the basic objectives, products and services of your company should be prominent on your home page. Is your corporate mission statement suitable for this purpose? If not, should you rethink it?

Have you spell checked the page, including the graphics?

Some other recommendations:

Consider getting some email addresses like sales@yourcompany.com, support@yourcompany.com, info@yourcompany.com, webmaster@yourcompany.com. These are becoming the norm.

Consider using some form of navigation bar, with clickable icons to the home page, the contacts page, the site map page, the products page, the services page, the support page, the search page, and the "about yourcompany page". This navigation bar should be at the top or side of every page, so that people can access these key pages from anywhere on your site. Don't place them at the bottom as they may not find them.

Consider calling these pages index.html,contact.html,sitemap.html, products.html, services.html, support.html, search.html, and about.html. You would be surprised how common these names are, and how easy it is to navigate sites like this.

Consider getting a domain name like www.yourcompany.com.

Check out the size of your graphics images, and try not to subject your visitors to lengthy waits.

Don't have an opening screen which just displays your logo and says "Click here to go to the xyz site". They would prefer to be there already. Unless they have to acknowledge that they are over 18 to visit your site, what is the point?

Don't bother to display a site counter if it just proves nobody is interested ie unless you have enough hits on your pages to be proud of.

Use a white (or light) background.

Remember not everyone will start their visit to your site at the home (or top) page. They may not have seen your company name, or know where to find the contact information.

Again - consider getting a professional to construct or revise your pages if you haven't already done so. I do not offer this service - I am not a graphics designer (can't you tell?). If you can't find anyone, contact me and I will refer you to some one.

Consider generating traffic to your site by placing web advertisements at key locations specific to your industry - user group sites, industry organisations, etc. Even these SCADA pages. The cost is small compared with the other costs incurred in setting up a web site. After all didn't you set up the site in the first place to display your company name as widely as possible. Some logos I display in the most obscure corners of my site are displayed more times on my pages than on the companies own web pages. A banner ad can be displayed more times on this site in a week than many companies achieve in a year on their own site. Click here for enquiries.

The above points are very basic, and appear trivial. However something like 75% of sites would fail those criteria in some way. Critically review your web site with these points in mind if you want to get good value from your web presence.

If your staff have enthusiastically created a new web site for you, cross my palm with silver and I will give you an assessment.