Forum Moderators: phranque
Now, this fellow use to work for Dell as a tech help rep and thinks he knows a bit about the internet as a result. He asked me what I was looking for and I said, well someone who could do a bit of HTML, CSS, JS and maybe a bit of the more difficult programming but just something basic, as I have a programmer already and I really think Ecomm sites needs to be simple, nothing flying about or complicated.
His reply was, "Oh, you mean the boring stuff. You know, I can do Flash, at least a good intro. That's what you should be doing. Something more interesting."
I told him that a flash intro would kill a site to which he replied no, lots of his web designer friends do them. I walked away at that point. It's no use arguing with that mindset.
I suppose the point on this rambleing is there are those who know how to put a site together so that you can accomplish what needs to be accomplished and there are those that put sites together without a thought to the user simply because it looks cool. Thank goodness that the real players in the internet did away with that garbage long ago.
And he's right. The reason I can't find too many decent web designer is they are more busy trying to do something cool rather than make money. ;)
I don't think people here would disagree with what you say as far as it goes. It is a great place with tremendous knowledge and friendly atmosphere. I don't think anyone here is saying any other person is "bad" because of their design style, but are trying to help other create the most effective websites possible. It is the very definition of friendly/constructive criticism.
A website that is "right" only to you and one other person usually is not worth building. Especially not if the same amount of (or less) effort would create a website that would be "right" to thousands or millions of people. If Google were "right" to the two founders and nobody else, not only would they be poorer in many respects, all of us would have lost a fantastic resource. It is a tragedy to see valuable and useful information presented in such a way that it is only "correct to you and at least one other person".
When I see a good service/product with a terrible and unusable site, I will drop them a line and tell them what's wrong with the site in my opinion. That's not because I dislike them or "agree to disagree", but because I want to help.
I think there are often two issues: those that have to do with taste only and do not affect usability and those that impact usability. As for the former, it just comes down to what I like and what you like. If I truly want a successful website, I will have to try both versions and do extensive testing, logging and tracking to see which one appeals to the group I want to attract.
As for the latter, it can be tested relatively objectively. Put a group of people in a room and have them surf and watch what they do. How long do they wait until they abandon a page? How many clicks is too many to get where they want? How often do they seek but fail to find? And, back to the matter at hand, is your Flash site easier for them to use than your non-Flash site or is Flash-site-1 far easier to navigate and much less likely to be abandoned than Flash-site-2?
If you're talking about making an effective site, it really isn't whether or not everyone here agrees or agrees to disagree, it's whether the person running the site is getting the desired result and, if not, whether or not the design of the site is the sticking point. That needs real-world testing, which takes a lot of money. Barring that, the best we can do is learn from people who have done real-world testing and have lots of experience, which a lot of the people here do.
So in a sense, your right. There is no one right answer. But in a sense you're wrong. Some answers *are* better than others and it isn't just a matter of preference or opinion, but a matter of research, testing, tracking and observation.
As Mark Twain said, this letter would have been a lot shorter, but I was in a hurry and didn't have much time.
Cheers,
Tom
As Mark Twain said, this letter would have been a lot shorter, but I was in a hurry and didn't have much time.
Great quote, Egophobe - and that gets right to the origional post in this thread. People doing what they think looks good without thinking it all through.
It is hard to find a good designer because designers can be like artists (no offense here - i'm this tempermental with some of my creations) -but they feel the site is a personal creation - where to a marketer, a website is yet another tool to make the company money and increase its reach.
I think the issue is that many, many people still think of websites as advertising when most of the time, it's not.
Yes, there are some sites that are basically advertising, and the more I think about it, the more those sites do benifit from things like flash.
But for the most part, websites are not advertising. They are either stores or books (some informational sites - but I won't bore you with my philosophy on them).
In the real world, you go into a store, you wouldn't want a clown jumping out at you and hopping around with a book in his hand saying "Buy this, Buy this." while I was trying to get to what I want. I don't know about you guys, but I would high tail it out of that store. I always tell the people here (where I work) to think of our ecomm site just the same as a real store in a mall. You wouldn't put a big fancy door on a mall store. No one would come it. You wouldn't force people to go through a gauntlet to get to what they want. They'd just leave. You should design most websites like you would design a store.
I think that most designers still have it in their head that all websites are advertising when in fact, most of the time web design is more akin to architectural design rather than print design.
If you walk around a bookstore, and just look for advertising, you'll see a lot of it. Some of it is to help people find things, and some of it is to entice someone to buy that particular book. Everytime you check out, you are asked if you have a membership card, and if you don't do you want one.
While I completely agree that a website is often also a store, it also needs these little signs around it to help impulse sales, sell particular products, etc.
The amazon gold box is a good example of this. You must buy it immediately, you know it has a good deal in it, even if you don't buy it - you've now viewed that product and know more about it, it's on every page on the site, but it's a subtle advertisement of 'buy now'.
