Six Essential Skills for Delivering Information on the Web

by Lola Fredrickson, CEO, Fredrickson Communications

Knowing the essential skill sets for designing, developing, and implementing websites (including those on intranets and extranets) is a key to successfully resourcing and managing website development projects.

This may not sound like news. But if my experience teaching and consulting is any indication, the responsibility for creating company websites (including intranet and extranet sites) is often placed on just one or two people who can cover just two or three of the essential skills. The result is usually a site that is less effective than it could be.

Good sites are the work of good teams bringing all of the essential skills together to meet well defined objectives. So, what are these skills? Here’s my list:

Technical design: Designing the site architecture for scalability, ease of maintenance, and, increasingly, for transactions, personalization, and integration with one or more databases.

Visual design: Creating an attractive, compelling interface that is also easy to navigate.

Content design: Organizing, structuring, and writing information specifically for the web, and for the audience using the site.

Usability evaluation: Determining how useful and easy to use a website is through heuristic evaluation and user testing.

Instructional design (for eLearning): Organizing and presenting educational content on the web.

Project leadership: Shepherding a project from beginning to end, keeping it on budget and on schedule, and delivering a quality product that meets the defined business and user objectives.

Each of these skill areas requires not only a knowledge of theory but also of the best tools to put theory into practice. And the tools available are becoming more varied and sophisticated all of the time. Some examples include:

• Web authoring tools (like Adobe® Dreamweaver® and Flash®)
• Graphics tools (like Adobe® Photoshop®)
• eLearning courseware and learning management systems (like ToolBook®, Saba®, and Plateau®)
• Programming languages (like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Active Server Pages, Java, and SQL)
• Best practices for gathering requirements and user preferences, creating and evaluating proposed designs, developing and testing pages, controlling site access, and optimizing site performance.

Given that you can earn advanced degrees or certification in all of the essential skill areas, it is a rare talent who develops expertise in all of them. This is why it is so important to use a team approach on web projects and to delegate tasks appropriately.

Of course, there does not have to be a one-person, one-skill relationship. Two or three people working together can easily provide all six of the skills. The key is recognizing all of the skills that are needed and understanding that they are complex and take time to develop.

I hope this skills checklist serves as a beginning to help you assemble the best team for a highly visible and valuable job.