Nobody gets it quite right the first time. Even the Declaration of Independence was revised before it was signed. Redos and makeovers are part of commerce, especially e-commerce, whether it's Coke/New Coke/Coke II or incarnations of Barbie and her cohorts.

I thought about these verities when fate led me to Nebraska for some rest and relaxation. Being an online sort of guy, I naturally turned to the Net for flight information on my airline of choice--United Airlines (www.ual.com). I clicked and scrolled through the United Airlines' Web site for 15 minutes trying to find arrival and departure information for Lincoln, to no avail. Then I turned to Internet Travel Network (www.itn.com) and found everything I needed in 15 seconds.

United has taken heat for its site in Business Week, but it hasn't led to any noticeable improvements. In fact, in some ways it's gotten worse. Granted, the site is easy on the eyes, but it's a headache when it comes to getting information or buying a ticket. Here are some pointers on how United could tune up its site--tips you can ponder when polishing your own e-commerce site.

Reservation runaround. At a site like this, you want a big link such as Search for Flights, Purchase Tickets, or Get Prices. What you get here is Reservations, but when you click it, you find yourself at a registration/log-in page. You're also assigned an 11-digit Mileage Plus number that you must enter every time you use the site. Does this seem off-putting to you, too?

"Registration should come only after a customer feels in control enough to make a decision to buy, not merely to seek information," says John Counsel, founder and CEO of The Profit Clinic, a resource for small businesses based in Australia. "If you place conditions like this so early in the process, it's seen by the customer as an attempt to put them under your control--and they'll be gone at the speed of light."

If you are persistent enough to claw your way through the registration process (Me? I'd probably give up and call United's toll-free number), you go through nine (count them, nine) steps before you get to the form where you enter a credit card number and make a purchase.

If you by chance click on Flight Search instead (which is hidden on the bottom left of the UAL page), you can search for a flight, make your selection, and then register. That's an idea so crazy it just might work.

How should the purchase process work? It should be as simple as ABC:

You quickly locate what you want.

You determine if the features and the price are to your liking.

You submit your contact and credit card information. (A smart site will "remember" this basic information so you don't have to enter it more than once.)

Control is the bottom line, according to Counsel. "The more you try to remove control from customers, the faster you'll lose them." Counsel says three criteria must be met in strict order: safety (no risk, or minimal risk), efficacy (your product or service does what you say it will do), and value (the benefits outstrip all the conditions that must be met). Safety is always the first priority.

Recommendation: The Reservations link adds five steps to the purchase path. Get rid of it and ask customers to register only if they want to purchase. A minor nit: When you're ready to buy and need to supply personal information, the form should also provide an example of how phone numbers should be entered. If it's not "masked" (say, in xxx/xxx-xxxx format), it can be confusing for customers. Form entries like this should be no-brainers.

Too many headings, not enough incentives. The eyes of Web surfers are bleary. Make it easy for them to find the most important parts of a site by adding white space, dividing the page into frames, and using graphics for the most important links.

When I visited the United site a few weeks before writing this piece, the home page was split into two vertical frames and had far fewer categories than it currently features. That design seemed easier to navigate than this crowded horizontal arrangement, which doesn't naturally direct your eye to the most important (and frequently used) elements of the site. (For an example of how you can display a lot of information without confusing visitors, check out Counsel's site at www.profitclinic.com/MLM/fs-directory.html).

Recommendation: Reduce the number of headings, especially History (which is the kind of pap that only the corporate bigwigs read). Just list the main headings (Reservations, In the Air, Mileage Plus, Reservations, etc.). Be crystal clear about why people should use your site instead of the toll-free number, namely, getting free miles for registering online. UAL should exhume this little fact from its registration page and move it to the home page. UAL's home page should also note that you can make hotel and car reservations at the site.

Find a flight. The first thing I need is a search form where I can enter my origin and destination and get a schedule and maybe a price in return. Is that too much to ask? Instead, the Flight Search link is buried beneath one of the site's category headings.

A search box on an e-commerce site puts prospective customers in control, giving them what they want in a flash. Ideally, United should put a full flight-search form on its home page, just like Internet Travel Network does. At the very least, United should move the Site Search link from the very bottom of its home page to the top.

Recommendation: Put a flight search form right on the front page so customers can quickly enter their travel plans and get immediate feedback on flights, times, and costs.

Flight numerology. Click the Flight Status link and you get a form where you can check flight status. However, the form requires a flight number. Didn't write it down earlier? Tough luck!

Recommendation: Add Flying From and Flying To boxes to the Flight Status form so customers can enter origin/destination cities instead.

Don't send customers away. When a potential customer clicks Flight Search, Internet Travel Network's search box opens within United's page frame. The form lets you search for flights on UAL--and other airlines! There's nothing wrong with United using ITN's search function, but it's an e-commerce no-no to direct customers to competitors.

Recommendation: United should customize ITN's search form to look only for United flights.

United does a lot of things right from an e-commerce standpoint, especially by providing tons of information. For example, you'll find particularly helpful customer tips on packing and using your laptop computer while in-flight. If United simplifies its home page and streamlines the flight search process, this fundamentally good site could function even better.

© 1999 Greg Holden. All rights reserved.

Greg Holden owns Stylus Media, which creates Web sites for small businesses. He's also the author of Starting an Online Business for Dummies, Small Business Internet for Dummies, and Official Online Marketing with Netscape (all from IDG Books). You can reach him at gholden@interaccess.com or makeover@currents.net. Readers should send their ideas and comments to makeover@currents.net.