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Ready, Fire, Aim!

Wanda the Web site had been endowed with alluring JAVA routines and FLASH pages, and she had enjoyed a fun launch year attracting lots of hits on the superhighway. Although she was still receiving glowing emails applauding her attributes, Wanda was nagged by bouts of deep isolation. Accolades are nice, but she felt she needed to get professional advice and the time had come to consult a strategist. The exam had been lengthy and explored areas seldom visited. Now, she was nervously awaited the prognosis and as he re-entered the room, Wanda drew a long breath and braced herself. "People mean well," she said, "They think a glamorous life is all I need, but I'm not building meaningful relationships and everything seems a struggle." With a heavy exhale she continued, "The kindest thing you can do is give it to me straight, Doc". Looking at his new patient, he did as she asked and plainly said "Wanda, I'm afraid you have RFA. I can help you but rehabilitation carries only a 30% chance of full recovery." Wanda's sharp wail startled the patient in the next exam room. At least the weak knees it gave him stopped his pacing.

OFTEN MISDIAGNOSED

RFA (ready-fire-aim) is a disease of the online process system which leaves visitors with an incomplete experience (such as teaching someone how to fly but not how to land). It generally manifests itself as visitor frustration and low traffic rates. Recovery means facing rehabilitation against unknown outcomes because many critical factors, like recapturing your target audience, may be beyond your control.
Once a Web site has a home page with navigation to contact information, services, and "who are we", deadlines or business plans often drive RFA to be misdiagnosed as ready-for-action. This results in premature launches that have only stepped through alpha testing. How do you prevent RFA? A good way to prevent RFA is a pre-launch checklist takes the site through solid alpha testing (a dry run of all basic functions) before it heads into wider beta testing (troubleshooting deeper functionality bugs uncovered by mock users):

REHABILITATION (Grabbing That 30% Chance)

A Web site only works when it can build the kind of relationships that draw visitors back as a return customers and, eventually, as community citizens. If the online experience doesn't support these relationships, the Web project is in jeopardy. Early relationships are fragile and difficult to rebuild. Rehabilitation means taking an honest look and committing yourself to reshaping lessons into foresight (and, of course, the up side of treatment is that you're providing a top experience to new visitors). First, ask how should success be measured:

HIGHLIGHTER, PLEASE

So, what happens if a Web site assessment reveals areas of ready-fire-aim? There are some simple fixes you can easily implement but, for now, keep doing what works. The first step to overcoming RFA is to isolate those weak areas or elements that don't work, assign each problem area an A-B-C priority rating based on its impact toward success and chart them into an action plan.

Easy fixes can be as simple as observing good manners. Can your visitor find contact information from every page? Can visitors find navigation and service "help" on every page? Do all your email links offer the full URL? How deep are your click-throughs - how many clicks must a visitor endure to get to key information? Are you guilty of sending users to a nav bar for a menu selection then to a section page that only offers another link? In an actual church case study, the final link took visitors to a page of 39 staff contacts randomly listed down a very long page. There was no navigational help as you scrolled down the page and, although everyone listed had an email address, every URL was dead. Thirty-nine opportunities to link, help, serve and minister lost - classic RFA.

Another simple fix is looking at the colors used on your Web site. It is a common practice for a church to launch a Web site in two phases. First, an outside firm is contracted to design the initial look. Then, in Phase II, the Web site is to be tweaked inhouse when time permits. Reality in these instances is that Phase I usually results in a church site that is too business-like, and there is never time for Phase II to correct the problems. The Phase I, inappropriate business colors (usually black with a cold contrast color like deep brick or steel blue)

typically go hand-in hand with a factual writing style. Without Phase II, the site never enjoys warm colors which offer a more inviting sense of online vibrancy for visitors, and the writing delivers facts instead of an informational sense of community - all classic RFA.

More intentional fixes include taking advantage of clickstream information. "Clickstream" refers to your Web site traffic and the visitor patterns traffic reports can reveal. Traffic analysis software, like WebTrends, identifies which are the most popular pages, number of visitors, etc. These user patterns provide important insight to eTeams who must develop an action plan against user expectations. A little more proactive approach would be offering a "how are we doing?" user feedback opportunity in the form of a simple online poll. (If you implement an online poll, avert secondary RFA by also providing polling results and thanking each voter.)

HIGHLIGHT DOWN