Internet Help for Small Business

Website Design - Avoid Glitz and Gizmos

Yet all the research shows that websites with clean, simple design work best for your visitors. Remember, they're in a hurry and don't want to have to think and ponder where to go next.

If the aim of a website is to improve or enhance business, then the owner must ensure that it serves that purpose by keeping the design as simple and easy to use as possible.

Because the Web is still a relatively new medium and millions of users, particularly older ones, are only now being fully exposed to it, a critical mass of discerning users has not yet emerged.

The result? Bad websites that many business owners would be embarrassed about it if they understood more about the Web and ecommerce.

Certainly, they would never accept a similar standard for a print publication, simply because we have been exposed to printed documents for much longer and have learnt to recognise the rubbish.

Flood of bad design

It's a repeat of what happened when desktop publishing software first brought publishing to the masses, allowing anyone to produce brochures and flyers. There was an initial flood of badly designed material before new skills were learned and higher standards demanded by the consumer.

Web usability expert Jakob Nielsen is harshly critical of much that's on the Web .

According to Nielsen (in his book Designing Web Usability), "most Web designers blatantly ignore usability and design for their own pleasure (or worse, the boss's pleasure) instead of trying to satisfy user needs".

Nielsen points out that "a snappy user experience beats a glamorous one, for the simple reason that people engage more with a site when they can move freely and focus on the content instead of on their endless wait".

In an article (Alertbox) titled "End of Web Design", he says that websites "must tone down their individual appearance and distinct design in all ways", including visual design, terminology and labelling.

Nielsen provides a number of reasons for this assertion, the first of which is that "users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know."

He points out that "it has long been true that Web sites do more business the more standardized their design is. Think Yahoo and Amazon. Think 'shopping cart' and the silly little icon. Think blue text links."

Anathema to the whizz-kids

Nielsen's views must be anathema to the whizz-kids, either self-taught or graduating from design school, all itching to use the latest cutting-edge software to show off their creative talents.

But what these designers really need to do is first subscribe to a half-dozen newsletters covering business on the Web . Time and again they'll find the old dogs, experienced Web marketers, extolling the benefits of simple, easy-to-navigate sites that follow accepted conventions and, most importantly, download quickly.

Nielsen, in supporting his call for websites to "tone down their individual appearance", points out that "almost all newspapers have the same information architecture" and that "the interaction technique is always the same: you get the next page by turning the page. Not by unfolding an origami of a crane".

"Newspapers," he says, "also have virtually identical appearance design: sure, they each have their house typeface, but they all use bigger fonts for the headlines and smaller fonts for the classified ads."

Cereal box analogy

Using another analogy, he points out that "all cereal boxes are virtually identical in design. They are all boxes of about the same size that are opened in the same way. And they all have labels that explain what's inside and list the nutritional values.

"You do not find cereal boxes that require you to install the newest version of Flash before you can eat the content. Or cereal that ships in a locked safe that can only be opened after solving a puzzle to discover the secret combination."

Nielsen concludes by saying that "the way websites remain exciting is by what they have to say (or what products you can buy, in the case of ecommerce sites). Not by causing users to spend extra time to find out how or where it is being said."

The lesson: be careful when choosing someone to design and develop your small business website. Have a good look at other sites they've designed and rather go for the designer who understands your business and its needs than the one who tries to woo you with jargon and the promise of using the latest technology.

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