Informing IT system Web site design through normalisation

Designing a truly customer focused Web site can be difficult. This paper examines the approach of adapting the existing database design technique of normalisation for achieving customer focused Web site design. A Web site can be thought of as a multimedia database, in fact under European law a Web site is legally classified as being a database. In traditional database design, normalisation is used to structure data and provide efficient keys for data retrieval. In Web site normalisation “data” is now the text, images, and functions (for example, e‐mail and ordering goods) that are required on the Web site. Keys for “data” are now Web site headings, sub‐groupings, and topics. Web site normalisation allows the Web site designer to structure Web site material and identify the optimal Web site navigational structure from a customer perspective, and thus, produce a truly customer focused Web site. A case study in a UK marketing organisation is provided in order to demonstrate and evaluate Web site normalisation in action.