Brand Interactivism

Use AJAX, Lose Money?

Hat tip to Chris Keane for pointing out that sites heavy with AJAX technology lose page views as a result. So, any business that relies on advertising for revenue stands to lose a lot of money because page view numbers will inevitably decline.

Do designers need to be concerned about a tradeoff between usability and revenue? When the goals of a site owner are not aligned with the goals of the site visitors, that's bad news....

Designing for Google

Pete Stein, Avenue A/Razorfish's GM, penned an article in iMediaConnection describing some of things web developers should think about when creating websites. He writes:

• For starters, when you're designing your website and/or making your marketing plan, you can no longer consider your site an entity unto itself. You need to design for Google. You need to design for a world where some users come in through the front door and some come in through the side door, the back door, or even over the transom. 
• Next, you need to consider Google your friend, a friend who regularly sends you a customer. You need to listen to your friend so you can plan for your new customer's arrival.
• Last, this type of planning must become a standard part of your marketing communications planning.

Right on!

 

Thoughts on the "Hilton Journeys" Website

OK, so Hilton's new "Hilton Journey's" site is playful, highly branded, and cute. However, there is a lot wrong with it.

1. I have a high bandwidth connection. It took a LONG time to load. By long, I mean more than 30 seconds. I expect that on dial-up, but not on my cable modem.
2. Every new page I click on has the same loading time problem.
3. Even after the page was done loading, the interface was slow. It took a while for the action to develop.
4. After all this waiting, at least there should have been a nice payoff. Um, no. I finally got to something that implied that if I clicked on it I'd be able to learn more about the beds at Hilton. I was waiting for something innovative and impressive. All I got was two sentences of text and a small picture of a fairly generic-looking bed. Stock photography?
5. The navigation is nearly illegible. It's vertical, the contrast between the font and background is negligible, and the font is very small.

I don't see how this website helps Hilton achieve its goals. They really should be giving people either instant gratification, or a big payoff. In this case, the site visitor gets neither.

Given that the entire site is done in Flash, it's also possible that they won't get good search engine placement for this, unless they took some very specific steps to deal with that issue (I really don't know in this case.)

Creativity vs. Best Practice

Jeremy Lockhorn at ClickZ wrote an article that resonated with me. He believes that there is a conflict between creativity on the one hand, and standards on the other. This is especially true online. Our industry has done countless studies showing what works and what does not work online. However, when every website starts working, behaving, and looking the same, how do you differentiate? How do you show that you're innovative?

This is something that Abstract Edge has managed to do pretty well throughout the years, but it can be a struggle. The right answer is to find a balance, and to look for ways to be creative within the constraints of knowing and understanding best practices.

Right out of "Blink"

Apparently website visitors make judgements about a site's value in 1/20th of a second. First impressions are vitally important. Malcolm Gladwell would be proud.

Aesthetics and Usability are Keys to Success

A report from Questus shows that usability and design are extremely important for e-commerce websites.

"We find that Web sites have three seconds to make an impression," said Jeff Rosenblum, co-founder and research and strategy director of Questus. "The actual usability is more important than aesthetics, but at the same time aesthetics are critical."

Clean site design is noted to be a more effective way of getting conversions from online shoppers, according to Rosenblum. "Information overload is a critical and consistent problem, and in this study we found that Web users were more likely to say that a site had too many links as opposed to too few links," he said.