A website is not a guy in a chicken suit
By Allan | January 6, 2009
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As a business, you have many options for delivering your message to your target market. Be it a billboard, newspaper ad, television spot or some dude in a chicken suit standing on the corner handing out flyers – each has specific techniques for maximizing its effectiveness. When incorporating your website as part of that message delivery system, it’s important to remember the web is its own medium and must be treated as such. All media types are unique and beautiful snowflakes… or something to that effect.
Many of the ideas from traditional media (television, print, outdoor) translate, while others do not. First, all good design guides the viewer’s eye in the path the designer chooses. This is Graphic Design 101. Sometimes this is done gracefully through the use of a focal point, contrast and repetition. Other times it is not so graceful (star bursts anyone?). Think of some great print advertising you’ve seen. I’m willing to bet the first element you saw was either some fantastically unique or emotionally engaging photo, then a bit of text and finally the company logo/call to action. Or think of some effective television advertising – again, I’m willing to wager the ad was visually stunning, funny or emotionally appealing with a call to action towards the end. If this commercial doesn’t appeal emotionally to you, check your pulse. This model works because it grabs your attention then invites you to act on the emotional response you’re currently feeling. People often buy on emotion rather than logic. Why else would someone buy a pair of Crocs? The emotion of feeling comfortable beats the logic of appearing sane.
When GD101 is applied to a website design, you want your users to first understand where they are (your logo and branding). This is especially important if your visitors are landing at your site from an organic search result – meaning they typed in some search terms and your site topped the list naturally, not from a paid placement. Next you want to make sure they find what they’re looking for. If they spend any more than a couple seconds looking for the desired content, they’re likely to leave your site and look somewhere else. Not good. Finally, you want them to find the other stuff in your site. This generally refers to your navigation and/or graphic elements to allow access to other areas of the site.
So, basic design principles still apply. This is a good thing. Otherwise, we’d have an internet populated with a bunch of un-navigatable (yay for made up words!), illegible and irrelevant websites. However, when it comes to the web, the standard method of generating action is no longer applicable. When someone lands on your site, they’re already working through the “acting on” stage. You don’t need to grab their attention with a huge “hey, look at me” graphic – it will just get in the way. They are looking for something and whether it’s a product you sell, an answer you provide or simply your business hours, the worst thing you can do at this point is lose that attention.
The magic word for retaining their attention is, say it with me now, content. If your content is engaging, informative and well structured, you’ll not only provide that nugget of information the user was mining for, you will also entice them to stay a bit longer to see if they can dig up anything else useful to them. If they find your site especially useful, they may link to it, blog about it, bookmark it, or better yet, take the initial step to do business with you. Understanding what content should be on your site and how that content is written specifically for the web is a great start to an effective web strategy, but that strategy must first begin with a fundamental understanding of the medium.
Understanding the web as a related, yet entirely different medium than TV, direct mail, or the guy-in-chicken-outfit and it will simultaneously release you from preconceived notions of what your website should look like while opening other avenues you never thought to look down.
The web is gradually moving away from the “all sizzle-no steak” mentality prevalent earlier in the decade. Today’s users are savvy and impatient. They know where to look and what to look for. If you don’t provide the answers they seek, you might as well get suited up and print out some flyers, it’s going to be a long year.
About the authorAllan has a vast, indispensable knowledge of useless facts, acknowledges his own nerd-dom and has yet to find anything duct tape can't fix. He spends his time developing websites at Robert Sharp & Associates
