Back to Brochures
Once upon a time - yes this is a story of long, long ago. Like, about 20 years, tops. That would take us back to the early 90s, when computers were not a staple in everyone's home - scratch that - pocket - and a "website" was a "home page" and the "Internet" was the "World Wide Web," and you "surfed" it.
Quaint.
Now we have the computing power of the very best machine of those days on our smart phones, in fact, more, and people have long since given up looking for the furthest reaches of the 'net.
So it makes you wonder: what is a "home page," er, website, for any more? It wasn't that long ago that you had to be a graduate of one of a few colleges to qualify for admission to Facebook - now, having a Facebook page for your business is what having a website used to be: a requirement of authenticity.
News and updates are more rapidly done - and more widely disseminated - via social media posts - so the requirement to "visit" a website is nearly non-existent, unless said website is like Amazon, a shopping hub, or like YouTube, and entertainment center (I have to chuckle as I write that, thinking how that term has evolved, as well).
But a website is still a requirement.
Because I have been in the business of developing them for about 20 years now - more or less since they began to proliferate - I have watched the purpose and nature of a website change from a brochure, to an "interactive" space (well, the owners hoped it would be interactive, with customers and clients avidly reading every word, signing up for "client rooms access," or RSS feeds (get all our news the minute it's posted to our website!)), to, well, more or less back to a brochure!
The arc for the complexity of website development has reached its zenith, and is now sliding, predictably, back down. Again, I will exclude websites that have a truly interactive function: shopping, entertainment, medical records - anything that depends upon a database, in fact. The real purpose of a most websites now, from the standpoint of the user, is basic information. By basic I mean BASIC.
I'd better find your address and phone number as soon as I access your site. If you have activities such as the hours that your bricks and mortar operation is open, that information had better be readily accessible, too.
The purpose of your business or organization should be clearly stated, especially if there is anything similar but not identical in operation (I went to a website recently and the event has two names - don't ask me why - but it took me several searches before I was sure I was in the right place), so that I know that I'm in the right place. The Department of Redundancy Department at work.
Something some businesses and many .gov sites do that is maddening in the extreme is try to hide from the public. That is, no phone number is available, or the phone number is there, but it's a general number than sends you down a rabbit hole of "press one for..." menus. Simple answers are not to be found. Simple answers are usually why we went to your website to begin with.
A good website needs a search function, especially if it's more than a few pages deep. And please, I don't need you to play fun games with me finding what I came to find - like clever menus, or "hyperlinks." I always cringe when I hear somebody say that word. Hyperlinks were sort of cool once-upon-a-time because at that time the medium was a message, and the message was, gee aren't we clever that we can send you off into a meaningless quest for information just because we can link this word or phrase to another page on our website! Now, they are irritants, and certainly if the only way to download a document or find further information is to force me to dig through a paragraph of stuff, I'm likely to be more than irritated.
More - websites need to be read from smaller and smaller screens. There was a lot of noise at one point about the pixel width (and, even, height) of a webpage. It was somewhat dependent upon screen "resolution," and what the average person had for settings.
Now, the average user is as likely to be accessing your website for a quick phone number or directions or hours of operation from his/her smart phone as he or she is from a laptop with a big, beautiful display. So again, making sure that information is easy to find even on a small device can be critical to how happy the user is with your website. I still listen to people who want to put huge images on their home pages, even though the vast majority of their users won't ever get the benefit of the big beautiful image because it will be hidden from view on the small display of their iPhone.
When electronic "books" first were explored, they were stand-alone devices, and there was a great deal of discussion about the size of the device, how much like a book the device could "feel," how much like paper and print the display could look, and whether the user got to "turn" pages. The concern was that people wouldn't adopt these eReaders unless they were book-like. We are remarkably adaptive, we people, and very quickly we realize that a book is a book and an eReader is an eReader, and we start to demand a whole different set of things from our eReader.
And, of course, now we read on our Tablets, which used to be iPads but are now many different computers housed in a small, flattish device.
I think you get the idea - there are rules, but they all change so rapidly that we're lucky we do adapt readily.
Naturally, the people creating the interfaces want to create a set of "rules," by which we will live and which they can offer to the poor, harried business owner as "expert." So, the logo goes in the upper left and is linked to the home page. (Wasn't so long ago when you might spend half an hour convincing a site owner that most people simply "knew" this and would expect it. Now, nobody questions it. It is part of the Canon of Internet Law.)
The primary "rule" from my standpoint: think like a user, not like a site owner. Imagine what they need and want. If you remember that the user's experience will carry over to their general impression of your business as an entity, you'll want to be sure they get good customer service, period.
Here's another example of a way in which the owner failed to understand the needs and wants of the user: Facebook and the Mystery of the Auto-playing Videos.
This was a monumental error, as these things go. Many people keep Facebook open by default as a tab on their browser. They can message with friends and take a break from work by checking who said what or what new puppy video is available. But suddenly people started to notice a slowdown in their browsers. What was eventually discovered was that Facebook was auto-launching videos - depending on your friends' posting habits, you might have several launched at a time. And of course, this would ultimately slow down your interface, not to mention annoy you as a user. And for a while, Facebook offered no option for this. Now, there is one, but it was introduced without fanfare, so unless it occurred to you that this could be the culprit, you didn't necessarily know where to go to find a fix. (Now you know.)
But I blame this on the designers not asking themselves the fundamental question: what would I want if I were just using this product, not owning it?
So, if you have a website for whatever reason: business, personal, organization, entertainment, selling - think about your user and why he's there. As long as he can get to it quickly and easily, you've done a good job. And don't worry about whether you've got the latest and greatest toy or technology on display. Unless it enhances what the user came there for (for the majority of users) it's just a waste, any way.
Quaint.
Now we have the computing power of the very best machine of those days on our smart phones, in fact, more, and people have long since given up looking for the furthest reaches of the 'net.
So it makes you wonder: what is a "home page," er, website, for any more? It wasn't that long ago that you had to be a graduate of one of a few colleges to qualify for admission to Facebook - now, having a Facebook page for your business is what having a website used to be: a requirement of authenticity.
News and updates are more rapidly done - and more widely disseminated - via social media posts - so the requirement to "visit" a website is nearly non-existent, unless said website is like Amazon, a shopping hub, or like YouTube, and entertainment center (I have to chuckle as I write that, thinking how that term has evolved, as well).
But a website is still a requirement.
Because I have been in the business of developing them for about 20 years now - more or less since they began to proliferate - I have watched the purpose and nature of a website change from a brochure, to an "interactive" space (well, the owners hoped it would be interactive, with customers and clients avidly reading every word, signing up for "client rooms access," or RSS feeds (get all our news the minute it's posted to our website!)), to, well, more or less back to a brochure!
The arc for the complexity of website development has reached its zenith, and is now sliding, predictably, back down. Again, I will exclude websites that have a truly interactive function: shopping, entertainment, medical records - anything that depends upon a database, in fact. The real purpose of a most websites now, from the standpoint of the user, is basic information. By basic I mean BASIC.
I'd better find your address and phone number as soon as I access your site. If you have activities such as the hours that your bricks and mortar operation is open, that information had better be readily accessible, too.
The purpose of your business or organization should be clearly stated, especially if there is anything similar but not identical in operation (I went to a website recently and the event has two names - don't ask me why - but it took me several searches before I was sure I was in the right place), so that I know that I'm in the right place. The Department of Redundancy Department at work.
Something some businesses and many .gov sites do that is maddening in the extreme is try to hide from the public. That is, no phone number is available, or the phone number is there, but it's a general number than sends you down a rabbit hole of "press one for..." menus. Simple answers are not to be found. Simple answers are usually why we went to your website to begin with.
A good website needs a search function, especially if it's more than a few pages deep. And please, I don't need you to play fun games with me finding what I came to find - like clever menus, or "hyperlinks." I always cringe when I hear somebody say that word. Hyperlinks were sort of cool once-upon-a-time because at that time the medium was a message, and the message was, gee aren't we clever that we can send you off into a meaningless quest for information just because we can link this word or phrase to another page on our website! Now, they are irritants, and certainly if the only way to download a document or find further information is to force me to dig through a paragraph of stuff, I'm likely to be more than irritated.
More - websites need to be read from smaller and smaller screens. There was a lot of noise at one point about the pixel width (and, even, height) of a webpage. It was somewhat dependent upon screen "resolution," and what the average person had for settings.
Now, the average user is as likely to be accessing your website for a quick phone number or directions or hours of operation from his/her smart phone as he or she is from a laptop with a big, beautiful display. So again, making sure that information is easy to find even on a small device can be critical to how happy the user is with your website. I still listen to people who want to put huge images on their home pages, even though the vast majority of their users won't ever get the benefit of the big beautiful image because it will be hidden from view on the small display of their iPhone.
When electronic "books" first were explored, they were stand-alone devices, and there was a great deal of discussion about the size of the device, how much like a book the device could "feel," how much like paper and print the display could look, and whether the user got to "turn" pages. The concern was that people wouldn't adopt these eReaders unless they were book-like. We are remarkably adaptive, we people, and very quickly we realize that a book is a book and an eReader is an eReader, and we start to demand a whole different set of things from our eReader.
And, of course, now we read on our Tablets, which used to be iPads but are now many different computers housed in a small, flattish device.
I think you get the idea - there are rules, but they all change so rapidly that we're lucky we do adapt readily.
Naturally, the people creating the interfaces want to create a set of "rules," by which we will live and which they can offer to the poor, harried business owner as "expert." So, the logo goes in the upper left and is linked to the home page. (Wasn't so long ago when you might spend half an hour convincing a site owner that most people simply "knew" this and would expect it. Now, nobody questions it. It is part of the Canon of Internet Law.)
The primary "rule" from my standpoint: think like a user, not like a site owner. Imagine what they need and want. If you remember that the user's experience will carry over to their general impression of your business as an entity, you'll want to be sure they get good customer service, period.
Here's another example of a way in which the owner failed to understand the needs and wants of the user: Facebook and the Mystery of the Auto-playing Videos.
This was a monumental error, as these things go. Many people keep Facebook open by default as a tab on their browser. They can message with friends and take a break from work by checking who said what or what new puppy video is available. But suddenly people started to notice a slowdown in their browsers. What was eventually discovered was that Facebook was auto-launching videos - depending on your friends' posting habits, you might have several launched at a time. And of course, this would ultimately slow down your interface, not to mention annoy you as a user. And for a while, Facebook offered no option for this. Now, there is one, but it was introduced without fanfare, so unless it occurred to you that this could be the culprit, you didn't necessarily know where to go to find a fix. (Now you know.)
But I blame this on the designers not asking themselves the fundamental question: what would I want if I were just using this product, not owning it?
So, if you have a website for whatever reason: business, personal, organization, entertainment, selling - think about your user and why he's there. As long as he can get to it quickly and easily, you've done a good job. And don't worry about whether you've got the latest and greatest toy or technology on display. Unless it enhances what the user came there for (for the majority of users) it's just a waste, any way.
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