Who cares what the glass looks like...is the beer any good?

Who cares how a website looks if it doesn’t work?

Well, the owner of the site, usually. Many of the websites I’ve built over the years have been for clients who care very much how their websites look, and often make decisions to enhance that aesthetic quality at the expense of usability (the ease with which a person uses the website).

Of course the “look” of a site is important. A website needs to draw and engage the eye quickly, or at the very least, not make the visitor puke on their keyboard (here, this might help you with that).

But drawing the eye is only part of the equation. Readers familiar with this subject might here expect me to talk about “function”, and how it needs to take precedence over “form.” In other words, don’t sacrifice usability for flashy eye-candy. But we all understand that, don’t we? I don’t need to beat this dead horse, because look, here’s a perfectly good, live horse that’s ripe for a beating:

Form follows Function follows Content

What’s usually left out of the puzzle is content. Yet content is the most important piece. It’s what the internet is about; it’s what you visit websites for. It’s what you came here for. You’re reading content right now.

Would it make a difference to you if this site was ugly (go ahead, call the site ugly–Google knows where you live), so long as you were still interested in this article?

Further (let’s assume you came via direct link), would it have mattered to you if, when you came here to read this article, the navigation was broken, the images didn’t show up, or the styles or scripts didn’t operate quite right? Would you still have read the article? I think so, provided you were interested enough. And interest in content is only effected by lack of good function or form to the degree that lacking hinders your ability to view the content.

Form follows function follows content. Content comes first; it’s what we build the website around. As a designer, it’s always better for me to know the content before beginning design work. It allows me to design a better website, something that fits the content in look, layout, and function, and to do it much more efficiently.

The benefit to you, the business owner, is a better website all around.

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Photo courtesy of stevendepolo

Is The Look Of A Website Most Important? is a post from: RSA Blog

Whenever I sit down to go through ideas for blog posts, I inevitably think of a few that sound great, only to realize hey, we already wrote that one. A lot of the things we wrote about last year are still relevant even now – maybe more so.

Looking back through our logs, it’s no surprise to find some content was more popular than others. After all, we’re still experimenting to find the sort of thing you, our readers, find most useful.

To make sure you didn’t miss any of the good ones from last year, here’s a short list of our most viewed posts from 2009.

Why Good Customer Service Is So Important

5 Reasons Not to Cut Your Marketing Budget in a Recession

Elements of Internet Marketing

Going Nuts? Don’t Cut your Marketing

Should You Put Video On Your Website?

Understanding Web Design

14 Practical Uses For Social Media

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Photo courtesy of kevinzim

Stuff You Liked From 2009 is a post from: RSA Blog

She's right...

What is “good” web design? Many people don’t understand what makes websites good or bad, and some are even surprised to learn that effective web design takes time, and isn’t cheap. Let me explain…

When you look at a website, you’re looking at an end product. Like a car, there’s really no indication of what went into the creation of the product. We can break it down into its individual parts – wheels, pistons, frame, gears – but we don’t know *why* they, specifically, were used in its construction, or how to acquire and assemble the right types of parts for another car.

Who decides what’s good?

Most of us probably don’t understand how cars are designed, and have only a basic understanding of how they work. But we do know how to use them. We call them “sweet” or “clunker,” seeing distinctions in quality based on various attributes, such as age, safety, power, or utility.

Let’s dwell on that for a second. The designers and engineers who build these complex machines understand them a gazillion times better than you or I, and yet *we* are the arbiters of automotive quality? How does that work?

It’s simple, really. Cars are designed to solve our traveling problems. Need to pull cargo in hilly terrain? Alright, here’s a truck with more power…how’d we do?

“I need cargo space, but also passenger room.” Here’s your gas-guzzler.

“I need a place to put my drink while on long trips.” Okay: this model has 200 cup holders.

“I need an economical car.” Here’s a chair on wheels.

And we get to be the judge as to how well they’ve accomplished those goals. SUV? Wildly popular. Chair on wheels? Not so much.

So these researchers, designers, engineers and others all get together and attempt to solve our problems. They each have a role in the design and construction of our cars, and, together with all the complex parts and mechanisms in the machine, make for a price that can be pretty shocking.

After all, it’s just this little car. Like…a frame on wheels, right? With lights. And gears. Computers. An engine. Hoses and fluids and wires. Fabric and safety belts and airbags and safety glass and…yeah, that sounds expensive now.

You know what? I bet many of us could walk into a big automotive company office and tell those designers a thing or two about building cars. They’re made for *us*, after all. “Here’s what I want…”

But we’re not really telling them how to design cars, are we. We’re just telling them what problem we want them to solve. In the end we trust them to solve these problems in the most effective way, all variables taken into account, because we just don’t know how to design or build cars.

So now that we’ve completely forgotten the point of this article, let’s get back to web design.

Web design is…

The process of solving a business problem, communicating a message, and facilitating user action on the web. That’s my working definition. By all means, critique it in the comments – I’d love to get it nailed down.

1. Solving a business problem.
Website design – even print graphic design – is not art. As a designer, I’m not creating a work of art. The graphical and architectural decisions I make throughout the process are not primarily based on my own preferences – I have reasons for each choice I’ve made.

This is because I am creating a solution to a business problem. However one might want to articulate that problem, it usually can be constructed as an objective end, “Generate more foot traffic,” or, “Increase non-local sales,” or, “Take over the world.” Whatever the objective, all of my efforts as a designer revolve around it and attempt to fulfill it. This takes research and planning, information organization, writing, discussion, graphics work and programming.

The point here is that web design isn’t like creating art. Designers do have to think about the aesthetic form of the design, but within the context of business goals and the rules that go along with a communicated message.

2. Communicating a message.
With every website, something specific needs to be communicated, both visually and through the copy. Call it the brand or the marketing message – either way for this message to be communicated successfully, graphic and structural decisions must be subordinate to it. Does this color help convey the message? Does it fit the brand? Is it simply a preference? In web design, preferences must die.

3. Facilitating user action.
If there’s a clear goal for a website, the website user or “visitor” is involved on some level. You want them to read something, click something, subscribe, purchase, or interact in some other way. The design of the website must facilitate and not hinder whatever action you want the user to take.

All design decisions must be subordinate to usability. If a website looks great but is slow and clunky, or isn’t easy to figure out, it is not an effective solution to your business problem. Yet if it’s incredibly usable but has no visual appeal, you might also say it’s less effective than it could be. So there is a balance to be found, but when it comes down to either aesthetics or usability, usability must win. If your visitors don’t take the action you want them to take, you’ve failed.

Clear as mud?

I know there is confusion out there, and I hope this helps somehow. Creating a website is not just painting a pretty picture or moving some colored boxes around on the screen. It is an attempt to construct the most effective solution to meet a business goal, and sometimes this can be a lofty endeavor. There are so many things to consider beyond just the “look” of the site: the user experience, structure of information, findability, search engines, and more. It’s no wonder this stuff takes time.

But we’re not talking about a piece of wall art, here. This is a business investment, the core of your company’s web presence – a web used by over 1.5 billion people worldwide.

Don’t you think that’s something to take seriously?

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Photo credit: lmnop88a

Understanding Website Design is a post from: RSA Blog

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.

A website is not a guy in a chicken suit is a post from: RSA Blog