Every website is NOT different

Posted on December 2nd, 2007 in Task Management.

Every time I hear someone say that “every website is different” I want to rush outside, grab an ancient oak, rip it up by its roots, swing it wildly and lop the top off the nearest mountain.

Every time I hear someone say that “everybody is different” I want to rush outside, race up the nearest decapitated mountain, prostrate myself, and scream very loudly.

The very success of modern capitalism and mass production is a testament to the fact that people have a great deal in common. Human beings have the same basic needs. Sure, there are differences here and there but we have the same basic drivers.

I have been in 35 countries in the last five years, and have met thousands of web professionals. The same basic challenges come up again and again. When I see studies of web behaviour, I see the same basic patterns.

In every country I have been in, I have asked audiences to tell me the one word that best describes people on the Web. One word comes up again and again and again. What do you think that word is?

IMPATIENT

The Web delivers maximum value when there are clearly defined, common tasks. The best web business model is one in which lots of people want to do the same thing again and again. It’s as simple as that.

Look at Google, Skype, Amazon, Ryanair. What makes their websites successful? The fact that they have identified common tasks and created very streamlined, rule-based processes to manage them.

I’m told that I don’t understand the vast potential of the Web. What about it’s potential for emotional branding as a result of deep interactivity, I’m asked. Huh?

There is indeed an emotion that dominates on the Web. I’ve found it all over the world. This emotion is called:

CHEAPNESS

People are cheap on the Web. They want stuff for free. They want deals and special offers. I’ve found that, on the Web, even the Swiss are cheap.

Please don’t think about your website from the point of view of emotional branding. Don’t fall into the trap of designing for exceptions. Please, never utter this vague, meaningless statement: “People come to our website to find information.”

Treat your website as a basic, lean, mean, self-service machine. Seek to maximize the value from your website. You can do this by identifying the most important tasks of your most important customers and by relentlessly focusing on these tasks.

Nobody ever comes to your website looking for vague information. They want to know what color a product comes in; how the changes in the pension plan affect them; what the weather is like in Ireland, etc.

Your website should be formulaic in both its design and its processes. If you want to really do emotional branding on the Web, give stuff away for free. Or better still, provide genuine support that quickly helps people solve problems.

Most websites face the same basic problems, for which there are the same basic solutions. There are now solid rules for managing websites. The first one is: Design for what is common, not for what is exceptional.

 

8 responses

  1. Bob Johnson says:

    Added on December 3rd, 2007 at 2:49 pm

    From my perspective, working with colleges and universities, this is right on perfect.

    The hours and dolloars spent on website design to establish “what makes us different” would be much better spent on creating a truly different website… one that let people do basic tasks quickly and easily and thereby established the most important brand criteria: “we care about you and we built this website to prove it.”

    Add Wikipedia to the list of sites that get the basics right.

    Now about that propensity to rip out oaks and destroy mountains… no comment.

  2. Mara Williams says:

    Added on December 3rd, 2007 at 5:16 pm

    I wholeheartly agree with Gerry McGovern. I happen to be working on something right now where 98% of my users perform the same task and the design of that task has been proven successful in Usability Tests. But what is hanging up my project & development team is the other 2% task. The 2% task did not do as well in the Usability tests. The users more or less quessed how to do it but where not confident that they did it correctly until the confirmation message appeared.

    Part of the problem was the fact that none of the ten users ever had performed that type of task. The task felt completely foreign to them. It began to make me wonder if trying to figure how to get this task to be easy and simple was a waste of time. I mean if people who did not know how to do the 2% task could quess correctly maybe users who actually perform that 2% task regularly would be able to complete the task more confidently.

  3. Eliana Benjumeda says:

    Added on December 3rd, 2007 at 6:38 pm

    Gerry,

    It is a pleasure to read your messages. If from time to time there is a period when an overload of work does not allow me to read them, it is great to get back to them.

    They make me laugh in the first place, which it is something that we hardly do everyday in our rushing lives, and they ALWAYS teach me something. They open my eyes to aspects or facts that were right in front of me but I had not think of them in that way or I was not giving them the importance that they deserved.

    Thank you Gerry for sharing with us your sparkling mind and unpretentious wisdom.

    Eliana Benjumeda
    Infoline
    Business Information and Market Intelligence
    Madrid-Alicante-Málaga (Spain)
    34-966 69 60 60
    http://www.infoline.es
    Member of Global Intelligence Alliance (GIA) http://www.globalintelligence.com

  4. Keith Holloway says:

    Added on December 3rd, 2007 at 7:36 pm

    Hallelujah, Gerry.

    I once had a prospective customer in the training business tell me that the “kaleidoscope” on their home page was great because it reflected the kaliedascope of services they offered their customers. (Yes they really had an animiated spinning gif changing colours and shapes on their home page to represent their services)

    They felt didn’t need to explain what they did - in fact they specifically didn’t want to explain what they did - because it would be too “limiting”. They wanted (make that expected) people to assume - based on terrible content and worse graphics, that the company could do anything and request specifically what they wanted.

    When will people understand that it is a good thing when web sites behave in an expected way? Since we are all IMPATIENT we aren’t going to hunt around to figure things out for ourselves.

    The answer of course is, never. Some people will get it, some will never get it. They’ll continue to think that being standardized is limiting to their creativity. All is as it should be, though, because and they’ll pay the price in lost business.

  5. Pete Shemilt says:

    Added on December 4th, 2007 at 11:27 pm

    Optimizing your site for the most frequent and profitable customer actions is great wisdom and for its success it requires clear calls to action and a ‘don’t make me think’ mentality. ‘People come to our website to find information’ is certainly bland, meaningless and a recipe for mediocrity.

    But an organization will benefit from developing and implementing a content marketing strategy - with its website at the core. Meeting a specific customer group’s informational needs by publishing targeted, high quality content online (and in print) can drive value as long as it’s combined with a goal-oriented mentality which strives to capture leads, convert prospects and drive up lifetime customer value. Content really is king on the web but only if it’s harnessed to drive sales. Content may be king but accountability is all.

    Great book Gerry, I really enjoyed it.

    Be relevant, be valued and get your customers to act.

    http://www.relevantandvalued.com

  6. Gerry McGovern (blog author) says:

    Added on December 4th, 2007 at 11:38 pm

    Mara, you raise a very important point. It is often the 2% task that takes up a lot of design work, and what’s more, implementing the 2% task often gets in the way of the major tasks. If something is exceptional, then it’s going to be hard, but if something is common, it must be easy. If it’s not easy to complete a common task, then the website is not doing it’s job.

  7. Gerry McGovern (blog author) says:

    Added on December 4th, 2007 at 11:41 pm

    Eliana, thank you for your kind feedback–very much appreciated.

    Keith, your story makes me laugh. These people are still out there …

    Pete, you’re right, content must be accountable. Content can make the sale, drive the action. How else can you complete the task on a website without the help of content? But, as you say, we must measure the impact of our content.

  8. Jeff Parks says:

    Added on December 9th, 2007 at 3:36 pm

    Gerry,

    Save an old oak for me - I’ll swing for the fences with ya! :-) It’s amazing to me how many times I’ll sit in meetings listening to people talk about their web services. They’ll describe all the cool functionality they will put in place, the slick design, etc.

    Yet none of the content is written for the site. And more importantly, the one question I ask that is almost never answered is a simple one: “What is the purpose of your web site?” It never fails to amaze me how many people who are “in charge” of web services who can’t answer this question.

    And yet, if there’s no clear purpose for the site, how does one determine what goes into the site? This in my opinion is why content management is overwhelming - too many people dumping too many things into the web site, making finding information extremely difficult.

    I think the cheapness factor you’ve outlined only serves to reinforce the paramount importance of getting to the point…quickly! People scan web sites for information - they don’t read them like books or other marketing materials like brochures. This is the challenge in writing for the web. How do you take an entire brochure and summarize this in content that is only a couple of paragrphs with links to other supported information?

    It’s not impossible by any stretch, but it does take a different vision.

    Brilliant article, Gerry. I’m really enjoying your blog.

    Cheers,
    Jeff

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