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As I’ve said before, I hate complicated sites.  I love simple ones.  And to restate the premise, I like my 50mm f1.8 and I use Apple products. When it comes to the web, I want what I want, and I want it now. 

Many websites (typically ones that have been through a marketing department committee meeting) are just a mess of images and text. Trying to find what you’re after is hard going.  More like rush hour (why is it called rush?) traffic instead of a well marked road at 2 in the morning.

So you’ve only got a few seconds, how are you going to use them?  I would suggest not spending them by forcing your user to swim upstream against a flood of stupid content they’re not even there for in the first place.  Yes, I said stupid.  It is.  It makes me angry.  Just like the phrase “make the logo bigger“.  Stupid.  Stop it now.

Three points. As promised.

1. Single focus.  Keep pages about one thing, reduce choice and remove unnecessary elements.  This will also help your search engine rankings as you’ll have pages that are highly-relevant on a particular area.  Apple do a great job at this informationally and visually.  Sure, other information is there, but you’re never struggling to remember what you’re at the page for.  A good way to say this is, ‘the more elements there are on a page the less important each element becomes‘.  Your users attention is a limited resource.  Spend it wisely.  What would you prefer, 25 elements of almost no value or 2/3 or high value?
    
2. Be lazy.  Do you enjoy (or bother) clicking over three times on a site looking for something? Either will your customers. Same goes for the check out procedure.  Keep it as efficient as possible and respect your public’s time.  The effort you spend mapping out a user process will come back to you as people enjoy their interaction with your site and come back.
    
3. Use Nappy-San.  Clean up your design and don’t forget the power of white space to relax and serve information. Be really considered here.  Nothing I hate more than crowded pages where the slightest portion of ‘unused’ space is more evil than rain on your wedding.  I don’t care if it looks like you made it 100 years ago as long as I can figure it out, but don’t harass me!  So this ties into point one, don’t make your user fight through the jungle to find the juice.  It’s not a war.  You won’t win.

OK, nice and snappy.  I hope your a little more informed about how to keep fussy fans feeling fantastic.  They get what they want, and who’d have thought it, you will too.

Love to hear your thoughts, contact us if you want more information on how you can improve your site for you and your users.

~ Rob

This entry was posted on Monday, September 8th, 2008 at 3:00 pm and is filed under Advertising, Email Success, Graphic Design, SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.