VC Star microsite help... Understanding the Facts of Life

VC Star is in the need of help if they are going to try and create a microsite in order to capture the youth market. After reading the Facts of Life, chapter 2 in the book Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug, VC Star has a lot to learn about web design and usability before they make a microsite.
The Facts of Life chapter brings some very good points to the table: 1) We don't read pages, we scan them. 2) We don't make optimal choices, we satisfice. And 3) We don't figure out how things work, we muddle through.
The VC Star needs to better understand these concepts in order to tailer to the younger crowd. When someone is looking through a webpage they are usually doing these 3 things. People are in a hurry and they want what they are looking for asap. People don't have the time or patience to read through the whole page, the want the meat of the necessary information and thats it. Also, people dont look for the optimal answer but rather satisfice around for a good enough answer. Lastly, if we can't figure out how to get what we want, we muddle through it until we come close enough. VC Star needs to take these things into account and make sure that their microsite follows these simply concepts.

VC Star Web - SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis relating to their web page

Strengths - Local, established in the community, has a presence and credibility within community.
Infrastructure - "in house management" and programmers. Available funding and openness to expanding

Weaknesses - the web page is just not pleasing on the eyes, it has to much clutter. There is a lot going on with the page and its tough to focus and find what you're looking for, its information overload.
Brand - in terms of their brand with the youth market, they do not have much recognition

Opportunities - they have a lot they can improve on with their web page, Simplify the page.
- they have a great opportunity to reach a young, new and large audience who are already on the web. Creating a social network site (using MySpace or Facebook) to attract the younger audience. Also, by having this type of page they can conduct low cost market research by seeing what links, headers, etc their audience is clicking on.
Promotion opportunities and target advertising.

Threats - Competition of younger, hipper, cooler, trendier web sites.

Overall the class felt that VC Star needed to become more in touch with the younger audience they are trying to capture. In order to do so VC Star needs to learn and become more educated in understanding the younger audience. They need to create a new site that will attract the younger crowd and keep them coming back.