Great websites do, not say
Never tell people what you’re going to do for them on the Web. Just let them do what they came to do as quickly and simply as possible.
“Welcome to our website.” What? I’m in a hurry. I don’t want to pass meaningless pleasantries with your website. I don’t want to shake its hand. Or talk about the weather. I’m at your website for a reason. I’m in a hurry. I’m impatient. So kill the welcome, please.
“It’s really easy and quick to do blah blah blah on our website.” If it’s really easy, why are you telling me it’s really easy and quick? For starters, you’ve wasted my time by making me read your meaningless sentence. Things that are genuinely easy don’t require sentences telling you that they’re easy.
When you go to Google, do you read a sentence saying: “It’s really easy and quick to search using Google.” No you don’t. And the reason is that it IS really easy to search using Google. It’s so easy that you hardly have to think about it. There’s a big search box in the center of the screen. That’s easy.
Links were invented so that we wouldn’t have to say things like “on our website you will find …” So don’t tell people about what they’ll find, link to it! Don’t have your website become a bore on a bar stool, extolling to his half-empty whiskey glass about all the things he’s going to do for you.
Government websites are in danger of boring people to death because of two particular character flaws. The first is that many politicians can’t help using government websites as campaign poster sites.
Big pictures of politicians on homepages. In an age of increasingly informed and empowered citizens, this juvenile propaganda is laughable and derisory. Does anybody actually believe that putting the picture of a politician on the homepage of a government website achieves anything other than making them look like a pre-digital laughing stock dinosaur?
The second flaw is that governments have this need to prove just how much of our taxes they’re spending. If I come to a health website, I’m not interested in hearing about how much the government is investing in health. I want to solve a problem. If I can’t, and you waste my time telling me about all that’s being invested, that just makes me feel that you’re wasting my time and my taxes.
One of the most important laws of getting elected is that you never tell people what you’ve done for them; you tell them what you’re going to do for them. But a government website must be even more focused. It’s the place where you let people do the things you told them you were going to do for them.
Nobody wants to read about your five year plan. Your website is a place for implementing that plan. Nobody wants to hear that you’ve just launched a new website, or that you’ve figured out how to do podcasting or videos.
I’m talking from experience here. I know how much effort goes into all these things. I know how excited the web team can get about all the shiny, new stuff. I know how hard it is to resist boasting about all that investment. Nobody cares.
Strip it all away and let people do.
Brian Anderson says:
Added on January 12th, 2008 at 7:26 pmGerry, I hear what you’re saying. I run across a ton of sites that greet their visitors like Granny calling you in for cookies, and engage in painstaking, earnest, instructional writing in inviting to click on this or that link.
It is an effort on their part to connect with their customers. In fact, they haven’t departed their own consciousness; they’re still inside talking to themselves because this is how they’d like to be ’spoken to’ on what they consider to be a new, and perhaps, impersonal technology - instead of a tool.
A profound misunderstanding exists that the web is a distinct medium: different purpose, different communications style, different attention span, motives, tasks, goals, experience preferences, etc.
As you said in a previous post, we are in the middle of the beginning and concepts of which we speak have not yet achieved mass awareness.
Alan Charlesworth says:
Added on January 12th, 2008 at 9:12 pmBecause I always say there is nothing new in marketing on the web [just new and faster ways of doing old things] I use a lot of analogies for my students. In this clase …
… because it is nice to have someone say ‘hello’ when you walk into a shop - I can live with ‘welcome to our website’ [though I agree it adds nothing to the web site].
However, any shop that employed folk to give you a 5 minute spiel on their mission statement, how they are helping to combat global warming blahdy blahdy blah every time you walk through the door would soon go bust.
So , then, your point is well made - and even more so because people return to the same web sites over and over again, and so want to get to the point asap, and not linger on pleasantries.
Jeremy Gould says:
Added on January 13th, 2008 at 8:50 amI’ve got a lot of sympathy with your point here, but its not always so cut and dried. Many people DO want to know where the money is being spent and what plans the department has for the future. Like any large corporate, there’s a place for operational delivery and a place for corporate data- both online and offline.
To take your example, health, in the UK the NHS website provides the health info and the department of Health site is where publishes information that demonstrates its accountability to the taxpayer. Horses for courses…
Gerry McGovern (blog author) says:
Added on January 13th, 2008 at 10:55 amYes, Brian, much of this sort of content’s intent is instructional and ‘friendly’. The people who write it don’t mean to waste your time, but they do.
Alan, I suppose a “hello” is alright though on a website whenever I see a “Welcome” I want to hit the Back button. But you’re right–if I’m coming back again and again this sort of fluff really annoys.
Jeremy, I know what you’re saying here. Woudln’t it be great if there was this great big government “archive” site where all the policy and plans and strategy was properly organized by professional librarians. And the departments could just send their stuff over, and then concentrate on serving citizens.
We need more sites like the NHS!
Jermayn Parker says:
Added on January 17th, 2008 at 2:24 amI have been guilty of using the “welcome” message, sorry!!
and the point about a major government website, I work in the government part time doing a local government department website and this idea has merit. In fact over In Western Australia, they are thinking of doing something like this and currently have a similar style website (www.wa.gov.au)
Michael M. says:
Added on April 22nd, 2008 at 7:27 pmLet people do what they want to do - yes, but getting them to do it requires both effectiveness and loads of indirect welcoming, friendliness etc.
The gesture of saying welcome is getting increasingly more important as governmental websites switch from providing information to providing service.
As always it is just a matter of scale and proportions. Welcome as a gesture is still important - but there is no need to be explicit.
Check out http://www.frederiksberg.dk - newly released danish municipal site.