You may find this hard to believe, but Sesame Street has been going for nearly forty years now. Even harder to believe is that I am a big fan! Back in my days in the RAF, when I was stationed in Germany, we were all so hungry for any kind of television in English that Sesamstraße was a cult favourite with all the lads because a lot of it was still in English. Cookie Monster, Bert and Ernie, and Big Bird were familiar to us all. So here I am again, all these years later, studying Sesame Street. Today's programme is brought to you by "web site", and the number "fourteen million". That's how many dollars they spent over a two year period to build their all-new web site. It promises to be a site/sight to see and the sneak preview is an object lesson for any company planning a new web site, even if the budget is slightly less.

The Home Page of Sesame's new web site

Understanding what you are trying to achieve is always a good start, and Gary E Knell, president and chief executive of Sesame Workshop explained their objective: “For Sesame as an independent producer to try to compete for eyeballs, we’ve got to be proficient technologically and innovative in content.” A lot of businesses I talk to don't really know what they want their web site for, other than they know they need one. Sesame backed-up their plans by carrying out research with their target audience, and planned features on the site accordingly. That's another lesson a lot of companies could learn from, to simply ask your target audience what they want and how they want it to be presented.

But the aspect that gives me the most satisfaction as a web site creator myself, is the layout. It is a classic. It obeys all the rules about how people view a web site. You might think that if you're spending that much money you can write your own rules, but you can't. Visitors to your site don't care how much you have spent on it, they will still look at it any old way they want to. How many sites do you see where they think they can make visitors jump through hoops and dictate how they view the site? It's a kind of conceit, really. Sesame have spent $14 million and you just know they are going to make sure they haven't wasted their money. So for nothing, you can learn the same lessons.

For one thing, they don't have a splash screen. You don't have to watch some contrived Flash animation download and play out before you are invited to "click to enter." You wouldn't be there if you didn't want to see the site, so why should you have to click, again, to enter it? Next, your eye starts at the top left of the screen. It's how we read a book or a magazine, it's how we instinctively read a web site. Sesame have their name at the top left, and then a row of big, bright buttons leading to the major sections of the site. It's not kids play, the same works for adults as well, even newspapers are using the same technique on their front pages to highlight major articles inside and make you want to buy the paper and read it. Below that they have a row of more general buttons and a search box. It's just logical, most sites have the same sort of links there and so most people are conditioned to look in the same place. So why put it anywhere else and make them try and find it?

The main feature of the site is in a big box that dominates the screen. On the Sesame site, this changes every day, on a business site this could be a feature article that you change every time you want to highlight a new product, for example, or a news story. It could even be whatever message you thought was important enough to merit being made into a splash page, this would be a more sensible way of communicating it. In an ideal world you would change this box at least monthly, or weekly if possible. A marketing message only gets across through repetition, so you need to try and encourage visitors to come back so you can repeat your message - but you have to give them a reason to come back. A regularly updated site that is easy to use is a good reason. Below the feature box are rows of smaller boxes leading to further parts of the site, as video content at Sesame. The eye naturally drifts down this way and the further it drifts, the less vital is the content being presented. Down the right-hand side are big attention-grabbing break-out boxes highlighting specific content that pull the eye across. You would use boxes there to promote special offers for example, or feature a client testimonial, something that would be important but fairly self-contained.

If your site is going to have a large amount of content you might consider letting people customise their visits, especially if you are going to succeed in bringing them back regularly. The Sesame site is designed to be visited every day, of course, but because they will also carry 3000 videos and 400 games, the kids are able to customise the site to their own preferences. That usually means you are going to need your visitors to register, which people are notoriously unwilling to do, or you could make use of cookies although that limits the options you can offer. If you think getting your kids to eat their greens is hard enough, try getting visitors to register with your site.

Across the bottom are some admin buttons, where you might put your terms and conditions, for example if you have any. But while the "About Us" button is not all that important on the Sesame site, for a business site it might actually be very important, so you would have it up near the top.

Overall, the Sesame site is bright, "busy" but well laid-out, and intuitive to follow. You could learn a lot from it.