This is the final draft of the report I composed for my internship with the Portland chapter of SCORE

1. Web
Design
Best
Practices
Redesigning
Chapter Eleven’s
Website
Tom Knapp

2. The purpose of this report is to summarize what I liked of my favorite SCORE
websites after looking at thirty sites other than SCORE Portland. I also researched best
practices for designing a website and recommended which ones to apply to SCORE
Portland’s website along with traits from other SCORE sites. All pictures are hyperlinked
to the page that they are showing.
New York City
Judging from the websites of thirty other chapters of SCORE I have looked at
from across the nation, the sites for New York City (NYC), Chicago, Detroit, and Seattle
were my favorites in terms of how they looked.
NYC’s has a navigation bar along the top of their page (though below the SCORE
logo and their mission statement) that links to everything. That bar simplifies navigating
the website and prevents too much information from being on the homepage while still
making it easy to find everything a client would need to access. Another nice feature is
that the What is SCORE? button has a dropdown menu that links to various sections
explaining the purpose and features of their office and clicking it brings up a page with
those same links followed by a short (one or two sentences) explanation of what the
article discusses.
The Resources tab brings up a series of
links to business schools in the area, American
Express, an accountant referral service, and other
services that are potentially useful to a small
business. The graphic at the left is an example of
the links found under NYC’s Resources tab.
Under the tab for requesting counseling, there is an online form that clients can fill out in
order to request counseling, which makes it easier and more convenient for them since
there is no downloading involved or a need to mail anything or call anybody. There is
also a picture at the top of each page in the banner that relates to what the page is about,
which gets color involved.
What confused me about the NYC site was that clicking the Volunteer tab on the
navigation bar brings the user to a page entitled Success Stories, yet discusses how to go
about becoming a volunteer. Otherwise, the site is well designed, uses pictures and color
well, and looks professional.
2

3. Chicago
SCORE Chicago maintains pages
on Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and
Twitter, albums on Flickr, and a channel
on YouTube and provides links to them on
the Community page on the left side of
their homepage. The Community page is
pictured at left
Their SCORE News section, a
portion of which is pictured below, is also
good since it brings together news about
the Chicago chapter in one place.
Chicago’s site also utilizes a number of
pictures in order to break up the monotony
of having just words, but not so many
pictures that it ends up distracting from
what they are trying to accomplish. There is no part of the website where there are too
many words, which helps make the site more attractive and prevents viewers from having
to read more than what is necessary.
The one thing that I did not like
much about Chicago’s website was that
other than some red text, everything was a
shade of blue. Sometimes, there is a table on the right-hand side of the page, which is
colored as a light blue. To add a little variety, yet not make the color overwhelming, they
could make the table’s background another natural color (such as green or purple).
Detroit
SCORE Detroit’s website has a search bar and a navigation bar, pictured above,
like NYC’s site in order to make it easier to find pages on Detroit’s site. Detroit’s site
also provides what they call the “Stairway to Business Success”. It graphically represents
what to do leading up to starting a business (developing a business plan, finding/keeping
customers, implementation, etc.) and then what to do to ensure the business has after
opening their doors (accounting, seeking loans, sales/marketing, etc.) and links to
relevant pages on their website.
One thing that Detroit may want to change is the graphic that they use on
their site periodically. They use a stylized sun, pictured at right, to denote
information of interest, but the sun has an almost Clip Art appearance, which
could come off as unprofessional. While I think it is a great idea since it brings attention
to new items or useful information or links at a quick glance, a different method of doing
3

4. so would probably be better (even if it is as simple as using a less cartoonish graphic or
using a word such as attention in a bright color).
Seattle1
The homepage has a link with short (two or three sentences) summaries of the
Counseling, Workshops, and Resources pages below a large picture of businesspeople
working with their mission statement edited onto the picture. The mission statement lets
users know where SCORE Seattle is coming from and creatively links to the About Us
page. What I found attractive about the homepage is that it puts SCORE’s services
(counseling and workshops) front and center along with links to websites (Resources)
that small business would find helpful without requiring that clients sift through
documents that they may not necessarily care about.
The Counseling, Workshops, and Resources pages give users access to links to
other places on the site through a navigation bar located on the top of the page and links
relevant to the section that the user clicked on the homepage will be located on the left
side of the page. Each page after the homepage has a picture of Seattle’s skyline with the
Space Needle featured prominently off-center, which adds a nice aesthetic to the page.
Seattle also has what they call the HERO award. It is given periodically to small
businesses to recognize their success. They are identified by various criteria including
how long they have been in business, profitability, growth (number of employees and/or
sales volume) and others. Some of the winners get profiled on Seattle’s website along
with a photo of some of those employed by the business.
Really the only thing that Seattle might to do with their website is add photos of
their Success Stories. Otherwise, the color scheme works, no page is overly wordy, the
website communicates well, and it is easy to navigate.
Services
There are a few services offered by other chapters that the Portland chapter could
utilize. The Los Angeles (LA) chapter has what they call Guidance Documents on their
Resources page2, which includes four PDF files and one Excel sheet. Permission could be
sought from SCORE LA to upload copies of those documents to the C11 website or
variations could be made with LA’s documents used as a basis. PDF files could be made
to explain other aspects of business. Ideas include ways to finance a small business, good
accounting practices, when to hire an employee versus a subcontractor, how to design a
website, and explain how to make sense of relevant tax laws.
SCORE LA also has something called the SCORE Success Card.3 A Success Card
can be bought for seventy dollars and used to get into an unlimited number of workshops
put on by SCORE LA for the next six months. It is similar to the idea of buying goods in
bulk – more money is paid at one time, but is cheaper long-term. The practice is good
business since it would entice more people to attend the workshops.
1
SCORE Seattle’s homepage looks almost identical to SCORE Fort Worth’s homepage. Once inside the
main site, it also operates similarly to Fort Worth’s.
2
http://www.scorela.org/resources.htm
3
http://www.scorela.org/workshops.htm
4

5. SCORE Philadelphia
has a service they call Disaster
Prep and Relief, pictured at
right. The service feels
woefully incomplete as it is
presented on their website since
it appears to only be links to
various pages on the Small Business Association’s website (the last of which links to a
page that has moved since the hyperlink was created), FEMA, the IRS, and a few other
sites. Another link towards the top of the page is supposed to link to a PDF called
“SCORE’s Disaster Recovery FAQ”, but the page does not exist anymore.
SCORE Chicago offers links to their accounts on YouTube4, Facebook5,
MySpace6, Twitter7, LinkedIn8, and Flickr9. These accounts are great for outreach since
those sites are so popular and many clients will have an account on at least one of those
sites. Since the websites SCORE Chicago use are free, there are no incurred costs, yet
there could be huge benefits derived from their use. Chicago also maintains three blogs,
which allows for opinions and news to be shared easily. Considering the other sites
SCORE Chicago has, the blogs may be a little redundant, though helpful if a user does
not have a page on a social networking site.
SCORE Memphis and Milwaukee both allow payments for workshops to be made
via PayPal, which can be easier to deal with than paying with a check, cash, or plastic.
Basic Web Design Best Practices
There are various areas that need to be considered when designing websites. The
first is page layout, which includes things such as appeal to the target audience,
consistency of the header and logo, and a consistent navigation area. Today, most people
automatically go to a company’s website to learn about them and what they do, which
means that their first impression will be derived from what the website looks like and
how it presents the organization to the world. Therefore, it is extremely important to
make sure that the website is appealing to the audience that will be viewing the site –
small businesses in C11’s case.
Another important detail to pay attention to is consistency of the site’s header and
the logo. Chapter Eleven (C11) already has a consistent header and logo, so as long as it
stays consistent after the redesign, there should not be any issues. The navigation area, be
it something like the bar along the top of SCORE NYC’s website or what appears on the
side of C11’s site does not really matter, so long as it remains as such throughout the
entire website.
General presentation is also important. Common fonts (such as Ariel or Times
New Roman) are used and everything is written in the style typically used on the Internet:
short sentences, short paragraphs, headings, bullet points, acceptable use of white space.
4
http://www.youtube.com/user/Peg505
5
http://www.facebook.com/pages/SCORE-Chicago/31019869736
6
http://www.myspace.com/scorechicago
7
http://twitter.com/scorechicago and http://twitter.com/PCorwin
8
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=59189
9
http://www.flickr.com/photos/scorechicago/collections/
5

6. C11’s website does a good job with short paragraphs and sentences, but needs to take
advantage of bullet points more and white space would be better utilized when it is
contrasting with well-chosen graphics and a better use of color.
Browser compatibility is also important. The four most widely used browsers
today are Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE), Mozilla’s Firefox, Opera by Opera
Software, and the Macintosh and Microsoft editions of Apple’s Safari. Maintaining
compatibility with recent versions of these browsers is important since the vast majority
of users will have at least one of these browsers, generally IE or Firefox. It would be bad
for SCORE and small businesses if someone could not access SCORE’s website simply
because C11’s website was incompatible with the latest version of a browser
Many individuals have a working knowledge of the Internet at best, so navigation
and sites in general must be easy to use. Ease of use for a website includes having the
method of navigation be consistently labeled and easy to identify. There cannot be any
broken links either, meaning that if a text or picture is hyperlinked to another page, the
link should be able to get to that page without showing something like a 404 Error
message. Luckily, the website for C11 already does this well, but it needs improvement
(such as moving the office’s contact information to an actual Contact Us section instead
of putting it in the About SCORE section).
Many people will say that they enjoy pictures and color since they evoke
emotions and set the mood for any given situation. It is important to keep in mind,
though, that there cannot be too much color or too many pictures since that will most
likely lead to some sort of sensory overload and will definitely detract from what C11’s
website is trying to convey to small business about being able to provide practical
business advice. C11’s website accomplishes this by not having too much color or too
many graphics, which is good, but at the same time does not have enough of either so that
the site is somewhat boring and has too much text.
It is also important to not use color exclusively to convey meaning since different
colors or combinations of color will mean different things to different people under
different circumstances (red may mean something to an individual while in one state of
mind, but something else entirely to the same individual while in another state of mind).
Again, SCORE’s website does a good job at not relying solely on color to convey
meaning, but could still use some to enliven the site.
Suggestions
MasterNewMedia.com provides another list of best practices. Here is a sample of
some of the practices:
• “Inform and teach your visitors”
• “Develop your own ideas”
• “Hate Internet Explorer if you like, but don’t ignore its users”
The blog focuses more on how a website should be presented to and interacting with
users instead of the actual development of the site. The fourth point in the blog (“Develop
your own style. Develop your own ideas.”) is of particular interest since it relates to what
Seth Godin wrote in his book Purple Cow about being “remarkable.” Godin uses cows as
an extended metaphor, stating that everyone has seen brown cows, but purple cows are
something special and unique, therefore drawing attention. In essence, a website should
6

7. be filled with original ideas and styles, not material that would boil down to a copy of
another page – it should be a purple cow, not a mundane brown cow. C11’s web site
looks nearly identical to some other SCORE sites, meaning that C11 could be seen as a
brown cow. For example, if someone were to move from Atlanta to Portland and used
SCORE’s services there and plans on utilizing C11’s services, but sees that Portland’s
and Atlanta’s sites are effective identical, a possible response is that C11 may not offer
new ideas, just a repeat of information from Atlanta. The only real benefit of C11’s site
looking nearly identical to that of another chapter is that it could make navigating the site
easier.
Taking inspiration from SCORE NYC and Chicago would be wise. NYC
minimizes how much is on one page by mentioning things as necessary, but then linking
to more information so users are not overwhelmed with too much information at one
time. Their layout also makes it so that no scrolling is necessary on the homepage, which
is good since most users will see it as more inviting. NYC also uses color well by keeping
to the same colors throughout the site. Chicago does a good job at giving external links to
pages that will help small businesses and they do not overwhelm users with color, but
there seems to be what could be seen as an overuse of blue.
Of the sites that I frequent, GameFAQs.com is my favorite in terms of layout. The
homepage has two top ten lists of popular material and has a daily poll to gather
information about people using the site. Chapter 11 could put the SCORE logo and a
login field in the header with a search bar and a link to a relevant news article just below
that. The main text box would be filled with general knowledge about SCORE and what
they do and a poll would be nearby inquiring about what is the biggest hurdle about
starting a business, what the hardest thing to learn about business is, etc. A field could be
provided giving a hyperlink with the title and date of ten upcoming seminars or
workshops and another linking to helpful sites for small businesses (for example, web
design or basic marketing) or Success Stories of clients who have benefitted the most
from SCORE’s efforts.
Questions do exist for redesigning Chapter 11’s site, though. What colors should
be used and how? Should the redesign be modeled after one or more sites? If so, which
one(s)? There are a lot of websites on the Internet already, so every idea has most likely
been done; it ultimately comes down to taking old ideas and updating them in creative
ways without forgetting Chapter 11’s past designs. Most people are creatures of habit, so
redesigning the site too much may scare some people away.
Color
Colors are split into two general groups: Warm and cool. Warm colors include
reds, oranges, and yellows are known as warm colors since they are colors people
generally associate with warm things (peppers can be referred to as “red hot”, the sun is
yellow, etc.). They also appear to be coming towards you, making larger rooms feel
smaller. Cool colors include blues, greens, and purples. The reason that they are “cool” is
7

8. because they remind us of things such as ice, water, and other “cool” things. These colors
also have a retreating affect, making smaller rooms appear larger.
Therefore, I suggest designing the site using blue and green. People tend to
associate blue with water and green with plant life, which will work with Oregon’s
abundance of rain and trees. I would also use yellow, though conservatively, to remind
people of a sunnier day, as would appear during the warmer months of the year. This
way, it makes clients thinking of Oregon subconsciously and associates C11 with
Oregon.
Background
Backgrounds can be tricky.
They help develop a brand, but they
can also distract users from the site’s
content. The Governor’s Office of Film &
Television pulled off using a
background very well. Since C11 is
based in Portland, a photo of downtown
Portland’s skyline could be used on the
homepage and other photos of the
Portland area can be used throughout
the rest of the site. As for putting text over the picture, either having a darkened text area
like what the Governor’s Office of Film & Television has or turning the photos into a
watermark would allow for the background’s presence, yet make reading easy.
Since not everyone has high speed Internet (some users still have a dial-up
connection), the background should not be a massive file. Microsoft Word, under the
photo editor tab, has an option that allows users to compress photos. The available
options are printer and web/layout. The web/layout option compresses photos down to 96
dots per inch, which is just under half the size for printer quality. Human eyes normally
cannot tell any significant difference between printer and web quality, but people who
have slower Internet connections will be grateful since the website is easier to download.
This applies to downloadable content in general, not just backgrounds and graphics.
Make sure there are not any massive files since that take too long to download.
Other Best Practices
• Primary audience
• Purpose (personal, educational, etc.) and location (ISP, personal server, etc) of the
site
• Types of content (text, graphics, video, etc.)
• Info on the homepage (mission/purpose statement, contact info, etc.)
For an organization like SCORE, a “middle of the road” style is best since
graphics will add some design elements that would add to the content and add to the
information given better than the minimalist style currently utilized. A higher end design
involving a large amount of pictures, animations, and other forms of media would
8

9. probably not be able to be used very well and would probably cause some potential
clients to not take advantage of SCORE’s services for no reason other than they have
trouble navigating the site due to too much going on and getting confused about links that
are not clearly labeled. An overly technical style necessitating higher-end technology
might be seen as unprofessional.
As for page layout and user friendliness, one thing C11’s website needs is a link
on every page that takes users back to the homepage. Being able to easily navigate back
to the homepage regardless of where a user is on the site is an almost universal feature of
the Internet, so incorporating that function would bring C11’s website more in line with
standard practices.
Long lists of links should also be avoided if at all possible. The Sponsors page
could easily be shortened to just the category titles that link to each section with the
sponsors’ logo that is hyperlinked to their homepage. Also, the Resources page could be
cut down to just a list of the category names and each name links to a separate page with
the appropriate information on them (e.g. Business Plan would link to a page called
“Business Plan” and provide the links to the three SBA pages listed already given). It
makes the page shorter and easier to read while also avoiding clutter.
Workshop Pricing
For the sake of marketing C11, there are a few ideas in relation to workshop
prices. SCORE Chicago offers a bundle of workshops called the Business Certificate
Series at a discount if clients sign up for the whole series, saving $100 if they register for
all six classes. A second option is offering half price to additional attendees if the primary
attendee pays full price for the class and/or offering a discount if clients pay the same day
as they register or with PayPal like SCORE Washington DC. The third option is offering
clients a free class if they refer someone and that individual then signs up for a class. It is
similar to how the direct bank ING Direct offers clients ten dollars if they refer someone
who signs up for an account with an initial $250 deposit.
SCORE Minneapolis offers a service called Walk-In Wednesdays. It is a time
from one in the afternoon until 3:30 where clients can walk into the office, meet with a
volunteer, and receive counseling. Walk-In Wednesdays appear to be a time where
people can come in and ask a few quick questions and not have to worry about
scheduling a time to meet. For simple issues or for clients who only need to come in once
to ask a couple of questions, something comparable to Walk-In Wednesdays could be a
good idea and could easily attract new clients.
9

10. References
http://www.oregonfilm.org/10
http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/color/a/symbolism_2.htm
http://interiordec.about.com/cs/colorindecor/f/faq_warm_colors.htm
http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2006/03/25/web_design_and_development_top.ht
m
http://terrymorris.net/bestpractices/
http://mason.gmu.edu/~montecin/webdesign.htm
10
The Governor’s Office of Film & Television
10