Business 2.0 http://tc.eserver.org/publisher/Business_2.0 A listing of works published by Business 2.0 in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif Business 2.0 http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Business_2.0 Electronic Publishing http://tc.eserver.org/19249.html http://tc.eserver.org/19249.html A directory of online electronic publishing resources from the perspective of e-business. Website Usability http://tc.eserver.org/19247.html http://tc.eserver.org/19247.html A directory of links to online website usability resources. Design for Process, Not Products http://tc.eserver.org/13791.html http://tc.eserver.org/13791.html Customers of business-to-business sites are often faced with much more difficult decisions than the customers of business-to-consumer sites. A concept such as 'getting management approval' doesn't even exist in B-to-C but is core to most B-to-B processes. We recently studied users who were trying to decide whether to lease or buy office equipment. BuyerZone.com and OfficeMax both failed because they didn't support users going through a process. In order to support a customer's process, businesses need to understand it from the user's perspective. If users feel pushed through a process or can't figure out what to do next, you're skipping steps that matter to them. Don't design Webpages. Design support for users' tasks. Intranets Save Time--But for Whom? http://tc.eserver.org/13792.html http://tc.eserver.org/13792.html The world economy will lose roughly $100 billion because of bad intranet usability. Why is this? The intranet, as the corporate information infrastructure is called, is supposed to dramatically enhance employee productivity. That's the party line, but it's not the reality. The reality is that most intranets are a mess. Employees waste inordinate amounts of time trying to find answers to their problems, and most companies have no active programs in place to improve their intranets or make them into productivity tools. Intranets often suffer from the worst mistakes of Website design while having only a fraction of the budget allocated to marketing-oriented Websites.