I was exchanging emails with Lisa Maile the very well known image consultant. She asked if I would review her site at www.lisamaileseminars.com and since Lisa is one of my favorite people, I was happy to oblige.

Lisa’s site has a challenge common to a lot of the sites we are asked to redesign at SGG. It is trying to communicate to two very different audiences at the same time. Small and large corporations are visiting Lisa’s site to evaluate Lisa’s corporate programs. Those might be corporate HR Directors or Sales Managers who are trying to see how Lisa’s programs affect the bottom line.

At the same time, a lot of individuals are going to Lisa’s site because they’ve heard about Lisa’s ability to change someone’s image to the point that they are better interviewees and get better jobs.

Each of those potential prospects may be slightly confused trying to take in the sales arguments for the other. Plus, the copy should be different, shouldn’t it? To talk to the individual, you’d want to talk personally, slightly informally, as if they were in the room next to you.

For the corporate prospect, the selling copy would be more quantifiable and more to the point.

So what is a website to do?

The key is to create paths. Rather than putting all of the navigation options on the front page and hoping the visitor picks the right ones in the order that you would present to them if you were giving a personal sales presentation, you simply design the navigation around the choices you want them to make, exposing some choices only on the interior pages.

That really is one of the biggest recent changes in web design strategy. It’s not about the “what,” but rather the “who.”