The ICAEW Website – How Could it be Improved?

For most companies, having a web site is a necessity but it’s not enough to merely have a web site – it has to be good. A website can be thought of as your most persistent communication vehicle with customers and prospects. Perhaps the best thing about a web site is that it can be accessible by a huge amount of people from almost any location in the world and it can be updated whenever you want, unlike with an incorrect listing in the Yellow Pages for example (www.allbusiness.com). On first glance at the ICAEW’s (Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales) homepage, it is clear to see that the site is in fact very well-designed. It is difficult to find any major flaws but nevertheless, there are some suggestions which can be made which may improve the site to some degree.

A survey indicated that major factors for a successful web page include page loading speed, business content, navigation efficiency, security and marketing/customer focus (Gehrke, 1999). The ICAEW homepage loads very quickly with respect to the internet connection speeds that are widely available today and does not contain too many large graphics. However for users with slower internet connection speeds (e.g. 56k dial-up), perhaps it could be useful to offer a text-only (or low graphics) version of the website just as BBC do with their website. This would accommodate almost everybody who has internet access.

Another minor adjustment which can be made to the homepage is to reposition the central message slightly. “The centre of the homepage is the lead story. It is easier to get the eye to focus on one lead story than multiple stories of equal importance, where the eye tends to skim. The lead story acts to anchor the reader and help ‘lead’ them deeper into the website” (http://www.gerrymcgovern.com). The “Inspiring Business Confidence” box could be positioned more centrally to catch the focus of the reader and the text inside it could be made larger or put in bold to make it stand out more. This will ensure that ICAEW gets their message across to their intended audience.

Navigation efficiency is one area that the site can definitely be improved on in a number of ways. First of all, instead of directing you to another page to log in, it is much more convenient to be able to log in to your own account regardless of what page you are viewing on the site. This could be achieved by having a login box at the top of the page, similar to the style used on the ICAS (Institute of Chartered Accountants in Scotland) website. The tabs near the top of the homepage allows the user to navigate to specific sections of the website such as ‘qualifications’, ‘members’, ‘students’, etc, but in order to find the subsections for each category you have to access the relevant page first. For example to find the subsections for qualifications you must first access the qualifications page. For some people who are familiar with the site and know what they are looking for, this can be a slightly drawn-out process. One way to speed up navigation is to show all of the subsections for each category in a menu which appears when you hover over the link or click the link with your mouse.

Colour schemes of websites are also important. “Many times good layouts get spoiled because of the wrong selection of colour schemes. In real sense, colour scheme is a good weapon to enhance a layout. If you use colours carefully you can make wonders out of it” (http://www.layoutgalaxy.com). As ICAEW use red as their main colour, it is appropriate that they use red as the colour of all their links and headings but perhaps it is better to make use of various colours in order to improve navigation. On the ICAS website the tabs which direct you to different sections of the website are also colour-coded (blue for ‘home’, red for ‘about ICAS’, green for ‘members’ and yellow for ‘CA Students’). Once a section is selected the subsections appear on the left side of the page and these tabs for the subsections are also colour-coded in the relevant colour.

My personal belief is that functionality and usefulness are far more important to the success of your website than how nice and elegant it looks. In the case of ICAEW’s site, I believe that they use only one colour and small fonts to give the site a more ‘professional’ and stylish look. However using various colours would make it easier to navigate through the site and using a larger font size would make the text easier to read and more practical.

“Web 2.0 describes the changing trends in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aim to enhance creativity, communications, secure information sharing, collaboration and functionality of the web” (www.wikipedia.com). The ICAEW website does not contain many of the features of a Web 2.0 website. For example, a feature which is not available at the moment on the ICAEW website is RSS (Really simple syndication) feeds. This is a useful feature of modern-day websites. The feature itself is extremely useful for keeping users up-to-date with the latest news regarding the accountancy body. This could include news of upcoming events and changes in accounting standards. Having an RSS feed available would allow users to log on to their own RSS reader (e.g. www.bloglines.com) and then download all the news which they have not read yet. This is much more convenient than always checking out the news section on the ICAEW website.

Overall, the ICAEW website is a well-designed site and there are not many major flaws with it. The site has the layout and design of what a professional site should look like but the trade-off here is that the site suffers from a few practicality problems. In my opinion the content on a website is of vital importance; users do not spend time looking at websites but in fact, they spend their time reading the content that is on them.

References:

http://www.icaew.com
http://www.icas.org.uk
Gehrke, 1999, Determinants of Successful Web Design: Relative Importance and Recommendations for Effectiveness
http://www.allbusiness.com/marketing-advertising/product-positioning/3878710-1.html
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2004/nt_2004_02_02_ms.htm
http://www.layoutgalaxy.com/html/htmnewletter7-page1.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0

Auctionwire

In early 2004, the online auctions industry was young but was enjoying a period of enormous growth. Josh Gold and David Romeo, both in their mid late 20s and coming from entrepreneurial families spotted a gap in the market – no online auction business focused on dealing with corporate and charity customers. They decided to take advantage of this opportunity and formed Auctionwire – a business which aimed to be a new sales channel, allowing corporations in Canada to sell excess goods and capital goods through online auctions and also providing a fundraising tool for charities as they would be able to sell donated items online. Their main source of revenue would come from charging clients a commission but this would only be from successful auctions. In exchange for this fee, they would manage the complete auction process and absorb all listing fees. Auctionwire’s plan was to maximise the gains of the client through using eBay’s massive customer base, their own auction management process and their own experience in making successful auctions.

Although they are operating in a potentially lucrative market, there are a number of flaws to their business model. Gold and Romeo may both have some business and online background but they both have little experience in the online auction industry. Only charging commission on successful sales is risky, particularly for charities selling donated items. If goods do not sell then they have to pay the listing fee and this cost will not be recovered. Timing is also crucial for setting up a business and May 2004 is possibly too early as the market is so young and a decent software package for online auctions is not currently available.

Central to Auctionwire’s success will be their decision concerning their choice of software. Firstly, they required the software to be compatible with eBay, but other crucial factors included reliability and ease of use. They also planned to have a multiple client module, Canadian market functionality and preferably have good customer support. They also wanted to limit spending to $15,000. They have 4 choices of software which they can buy in: SuperAuction, Canauction, Clear-Bid, Blackthorne Pro. A further option is to make the software themselves from scratch. Each of these options fitted their needs differently and all of them are far from perfect.

In my opinion the first option that should be ruled out is the option of designing their own software. Although this option could possibly allow for a perfectly tailored system, it has too many drawbacks. They require the software as soon as possible if they are to meet the projected launch date and this option would require a great deal of time from both the developers and also Gold and Romeo themselves. The software would also be completely untested presenting too great a risk for them.

Out of the 4 buy-in choices, I feel that 2 of them should not be given much consideration. Clear-Bid is perhaps the worst option. At a cost of $5,000 to set up, $1,000 per month in ongoing costs and $10,000 for the multiple client module, this would exceed the budget that was set. At such a great cost, it is also not a perfect fit to their needs as it lacks a Canadian shipping calculator, has downtime issues and a customer service which does not offer immediate assistance. The cheapest option would be Blackthorne Pro. It would cost $5000 to set up with running costs of only $24 per month. However cost cannot be the deciding factor as this software is still in a beta testing phase making it far too high risk. It is also designed exclusively for the US and it could take too long for their planned expansion to Canada to actually happen.

I believe that the other 2 options, SuperAuction and Canauction are the best of a bad bunch. SuperAuction, on paper is a very strong package. It boasts both an online and offline solution meaning that downtime would not be an issue provided that the offline solution is continuously updated by the users. They have targeted the US customer but with some additional investment from Gold and Romeo, I think they could adapt their service for Canada also. It would cost $5,000 to set up and $300 per month in ongoing costs. However the reason why SuperAuction cannot be selected is because of their past record. In January 2004, eBay halted access to its Checkout Redirect feature through the SuperAuction platform. They have repeatedly failed to live up to the expectations that they agreed in the Service Level Agreement and many sellers are upset with their services and eBay have also stated that the outages have been a major problem. Launching Auctionwire with this kind of bad publicity would be detrimental to their success.

This leaves only Canauction – a brand new online auction software based in Toronto, which means the Canadian shipping calculator will definitely be there. It is run by a very small team of software developers and also offers both an online and offline solution. They have not yet secured many clients but at least they start from a clean-slate. They have a software solution that is believed to be well-suited to managing multiple clients but having said all this there are also considerable risks associated with this package. There are still bugs that need fixing, and many features are not fully working yet. Customer service is weak and inflexible but the software cost is reasonable at $5,000 plus $250 per month. Minor software modifications may be pricy but Auctionwire’s budget is probably large enough to cope with any necessary modifications. I believe that Auctionwire should select Canauction as their software package but they should definitely invest some extra finance into the software to ensure that nearly all of the bugs are ironed out and that all of the features are working properly in time for their May launch date.