Graphic design is the first thing that many Web site owners and managers think about when they seek out the services of a Web developer. There is no denying that the graphic design element of a Web site is important, but having a distorted perspective on the importance of design can be a stumbling stone in reaching the goal of creating an effective site. Here are two common pitfalls:

1. Design Myopia—an owner or manager drives a Web design from their personal perspective and preferences. This approach might be fine for setting up a personal page on MySpace, but is most often not a good approach for effectively communicating the quality and unique value of a business or organization to the much broader cross section of those who will be visiting your Web site.

   It's important to know that using conventional elements for the basic design, structure, and style of a Web site is a good thing. People will know how to get around and subconsciously associate your site with other quality sites they've visited. This doesn't mean that your site will be a cookie-cutter template, it means it will possess a unique and professional visual presentation based on professional presentation standards that will best communicate your value.

   To be effective, your Web site should be built using best-practice design and structure principles that have been developed around the needs and conventions of your customers and prospects.

2. Design Centric Goals—Too high of importance is placed on graphic design. A site owner has a vision of what they want their site to look like and once that goal is achieved the project is considered a success. This often stems from Design Myopia as described above.

   While design is important, without design being part of a holistic strategic approach to communication, it becomes impotent.

   A site with no design will trump the most artistically original site if the former has quality content and offers intuitive and easy to use solutions to its target visitors needs. The classic example is the most visited and arguably most successful Web site in the world: Google.

Web sites are a lot like people, their success is ultimately based on the value they contain, not their outward appearance. This is vital to understand so that design is put into its proper place. Web design is still important, it just has to be the dressing for content of real value.

Google is like one of those geniuses who are so recognizable and brilliant that they can get away with wearing an old t-shirt and jeans to deliver a key-note speech. It's fair to say the brilliance of most of us is not as common knowledge.

Web design is the same, once the foundation of quality content is present, professional and usable design is an excellent catalyst to facilitate communicating the value of your site. In my next post I'll get into some specifics about our philosophy and methods for designing Web sites that are modern, appealing and clearly communicate the values of your organization.

Labels: Usability, Web-Design, Web-Development-Strategy

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Posted by Douglas Case @ 3/24/2008 11:24:00 AM | 0 comments

One of the biggest ROI killing design blunders for any product or publication is over complexity, and Web sites seem to be one of the most common offenders.

The term usability is used in Web design jargon as the attribute of how easily understandable and navigable a site is, and how readily it meets its target visitors' needs. Almost without exception, each of the millions of Web sites in cyberspace are designed for very specific tasks for a narrowly defined group of people.

Your primary goal as a site owner is to provide a completely intuitive experience for your visiting prospects. In spite of this obvious goal often simplicity becomes lost in unnecessary clutter. When this happens visitors become confused and confused visitors, according to research, tend to make a hasty retreat.

I ran across a great example of usability in design recently when my ancient Osterizer Galaxie Blender broke. While it had provided many years of satisfactory service, it was always a source of mystery and anxiety to me. I just needed it to perform one simple task—blend. But each time I went to use it I had to wonder at all the buttons on the front:

Chop (Off) - Grate (Off) - Grind (Off) - Stir - Puree - Whip - Mix - Blend - Frappe - Liquefy

Am I doing this wrong? Should I be Puree'ing or Frappé'ing this protein shake. And does it matter which off button I push, why are there three? Just for good measure, I would randomly use all the buttons on different occasions—all with no noticeable difference to my concoction.

In browsing for a replacement, I came across the polar opposite of the Osterizer Galaxie—the Oster Classic Beehive. There's just one switch on the whole thing and that one switch does just what I need without having to stop and think about which button to push and why.

While blenders and Web sites don't have much in common, the design principle illustrated by Osterizer's two extremes make great litmus tests for the usability of our own sites.

Now the Beehive looks much cooler than my old Galaxie, I no longer have to hide my blender from guests come over. But the most important thing about well designed products or Web sites is not looks (although good design naturally lends itself to better aesthetics) it's about making the value you offer clear and easy to implement.

I mentioned Steve Krug probably too much, but I know of no who does a better job of explaining the foundational principles of usability and helping people really "get" what it takes (and doesn't take) to create an effective revenue producing Web site. If you're the owner, manager, or administrator of a site I implore you to get your hands on a copy of his classic book, Don't Make Me Think.

Labels: Usability, Web-Development-Strategy

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Posted by Douglas Case @ 12/11/2007 03:07:00 PM | 0 comments

Web design, when compared to printed design, has some unique pros and cons. A big "pro" is the flexibility of publishing to the Web. A printed marketing piece is designed once and published—most organizations don't find it plausible to go back and reword a paragraph after 10,000 copies have already been printed.

With Web publishing it's relatively easy to have a Web developer make changes after the initial publication and the cost is nominal. Content Management Systems like our own WebSite 2.0 take this benefit a step further by allowing even those who aren't trained web developers to easily login to their site and make text and graphic changes.

On the "con" side of Web publishing a big challenge is insuring your target audience views your publication as you intended. Each type of Web browser interprets how to display any given page of HTML code—for example Internet Explorer may display a page of HTML differently than FireFox or Safari. Noticeable discrepancies can manifest even within different versions of the same browser. So, a site design tested only with Internet Explorer 7 may look great in that browser, but look like a mess in another. While this is a challenge, the risk can be mitigated by testing the majority a site's design and layout on the most popular browsers which are reported monthly by W3C and presently consist of FireFox, Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7.

Not only should how Web sites appear in the primary browsers be considered, but also the individual operating environment that any given user may set themselves should be taken into consideration. For example, if the default font size is set too small by the designer (a common occurrence in my observation) users may be inclined to increase the text display size in their browsers. When this happens the browser will reformat a Web page to fit the larger text. It's prudent to first choose a readable text size and then to design a site to look presentable when text size is kicked up a notch or two.

Another important consideration of your site should be the size of monitor (i.e. the pixel resolution) that your target audience is likely to be using. There are two basic types of design to accommodate this: fixed width and liquid or floating width. There are a lot of considerations when deciding which route to go, but in general, business sites are most often fixed width (as you'll notice by surging through Fortune 500 sites) with liquid width sites typically being to best suited for sites with lots of text copy...reference sites, academic sites, or blogs for example.

Business oriented sites often fall into two categories. The first, to take fresh prospects through a sequential process of establishing your credibility/trustworthiness and persuading them to become a customer. The second is accommodating existing clients who are retrieving information, executing transactions, making a payment, viewing schedules, etc. The best practice principles of persuasion and usability lend themselves most often to fixed width design because fixed width designs allow more control over the visual presentation quality and encouraging concise bill-board style statements and discourage verbose copy that statistics show most people don't read and find counter productive to their goals of being on a site.

Sometimes, there is an impression that the "white space" displayed to left and right of a fixed width design is undesirable. While each situation is unique, this empty space is often a benefit when attempting to communicate to a Web audience. A computer monitor full of text/graphics dilutes messaging by creating clutter. As Steve Krug points out in his classic, Don't Make Me Think, one of the most common roadblocks to creating persuasive and effective Web sites is too much copy . . . he advocates designing Web sites with a "billboard" mindset—concise, appealing messages that tell the target visitor what they need to know without having to wade through clutter.

The white space, which coincidently is only noticeable on displays larger than the site was optimized for, can in fact create a very desirable mechanism to funnel your prospects attention to the most important statements about your organization. That's why you may have recalled seeing those full page Wall Street Journal ads, that some deep-pocketed corporation paid a large sum for, that are mostly white space. It's draws a reader who is being overloaded with pages of information like an oasis in the deserts and captures their full attention.

At the risk of this post becoming verbose itself, I'll stop here and post more on this topic in the future. As I've done before, I highly recommend that anyone responsible for a professional Web site read the aforementioned book by Steve Krug. It's not a book about the technicalities of Web design, but provides an invaluable executive guide to understand the fundamentals of an effective and profitable Web site.

Labels: Usability, Web-Development-Strategy

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Posted by Douglas Case @ 11/05/2007 10:49:00 PM | 0 comments

Imagine driving down the freeway...you see a billboard with a message about an accountant specializing in international business, just what you've been looking for! As you start to read a few sentences at 70 mph, a giant helium-filled monkey that's anchored in place next to the billboard begins clashing it's synthetic cymbals while cables retract and expand it's eyelids. Hey look there's some sort of logo on the monkey's shirt for the accounting firm....too late, you've sped by the sign.

As ridiculous as this example sounds, it's exactly what happens many times on websites. We find a site in a Google search that looks like it might be what we're after, but on its front page were confronted by too many snippets of ambiguous information and distractions and no clear statements of what this site is about.

One of the most ludicrous distracting features that I've seen recently is "SitePal." A zombie-like animated talking head that speaks in slow broken computer generated speech..."Welcome (octave lower) to our Website (two octaves higher) Please mouse over my (pause) face to make me talk. What's even creepier is that on some versions the characters head slightly bobbles and it's eyes cross as it attempts to follow your mouse movements.

Having some sort of animated or technical feature on a site can be tempting for its novelty factor. But just because something can be done does not mean that it should be done. Research has consistently shown that superfluous elements are often detrimental to the overall communication and persuasion goals of web sites. For access to solid research on the topic visit the Stanford Web Credibility Research site or, in keeping with the theme of efficient communication, check out the all-time classic, Don't Make Me Think, by Steve Krug.

Labels: Usability

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Posted by Douglas Case @ 2/14/2007 05:37:00 PM | 0 comments