Interactive is a meaningless word
Making your websites more interactive is a meaningless strategy. Make your website more useful instead.
Picture this scene. You are sitting in a meeting with some very cool people. These cool people think that, when it comes to the Web, they totally get it. They’re very smart people and they’re so important that they have to leave their mobile phones on during meetings.
They like to talk about things like color and mood and corporate identity. They want customers to have an enhanced brand experience. These people have moved way beyond Web 2.0. On their skateboard attention spans they have arrived at Web 5.0 and are moving beyond that too. One of their favorite phrases is: “I think the website needs to become more interactive.”
I have never quite understood what the word ‘interactive’ means in the context of the Web. The Web is inherently active in that its corner stone is the link. The link is a call to action. We go to the Web to act, to do. Saying that a website needs to become more interactive is like saying that a football game needs more football.
In a Web context, ‘interactive’ is thus a meaningless word and it tends to be used by cool, meaningless people. In fact, the objective of making a website ‘more’ interactive is often absolutely not what the customer wants.
Customers don’t want interactivity from your website. They want results. They want to do what they came to do as quickly as possible. You have to interact with a hotel booking process in order to book a room, but you want that interaction to be as fast and painless as possible.
Do you think that Google designers sit around drinking lattes and mouthing meaningless statements about more interactivity? Here is one of Google’s key design principles: “Every millisecond counts.”
“Nothing is more valuable than people’s time”, it goes on to state. “Google pages load quickly, thanks to slim code and carefully selected image files. The most essential features and text are placed in the easiest-to-find locations. Unnecessary clicks, typing, steps, and other actions are eliminated. Google products ask for information only once and include smart defaults. Tasks are streamlined.
“Speed is a boon to users. It is also a competitive advantage that Google doesn’t sacrifice without good reason.”
A core objective of Google is to get you off its website as quickly as possible. It has a relentless focus on making the first result the right result so that you will leave its website in the shortest time possible. Google makes most of its money from advertising.
Many traditional media websites are now measuring success based on how long they can keep people on their websites. They obviously have lots of people employed trying to make their websites more interactive.
‘Save people time’ should be written in 10 foot letters across the walls of every web design team’s office. Do not listen to the fools who talk about more interactivity. It is from the minds of these fools that the truly awful Flash Intros crawled out. Focus all your energy on saving your customers time. Be useful. Be functional. Be brief.
Keith Grover says:
Added on May 25th, 2008 at 7:37 pmHi Gerry
In brief :0) - spot on, as usual!
Your brevity rule today extends beyond the web to include every medium of contact with the customer. Don’t waste a second of my time. Tell me something which serves my real need, or let me get on with my life and find somebody else that will add enough value to pay for the time I spend assimilating their offer.
I want to save my time so I can waste it constructively on myself and those who are important to me. Stand and deliver - because I call the shots.
Keith Grover, Copywriter
Dave says:
Added on May 25th, 2008 at 9:19 pmAnother excellent post. One of the challenges of my job as a web manager is that the cool people who leave their mobiles on during meetings are the people that hold the purse strings for future website development. Your writing provides me with ammo.
Other writers argue that burgeoning online communities are making corporate websites more irrelevant. An article I read today suggested Govt websites should be scapped in favour of opening-up the underlying ‘public’ data. Your posts are bang on in terms of the challenges I have today, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the future of websites and the challenges I may have tomorrow, especially for the public sector where service provision is a priority. Thanks again.
Hans Kristian says:
Added on May 25th, 2008 at 9:48 pmI am one of the fools who talks about more interactivity on the web. In my world this does not mean Web 5.0 or more use of Flash, but making and maintaining a dialogue with customers and other people.
“Focus all your energy on saving your customers time. Be useful. Be functional. Be brief.” Gerry uses 535 words to describe “be brief”. And he probably wants to provoke the reader with the header statement: “Interactive is a meaningless word”.
I am tempted to quote Einstein: “Make it as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
Gerry makes cheap jokes to get his message through. Some of my customers wants and likes to use some time on good and relevant information. No, thanks Gerry. You have some good points, but I don’t buy your message. It’s too cheap, oversimplified and too long.
Glen Farrelly says:
Added on May 26th, 2008 at 2:43 amThanks Gerry for documenting the argument to not add interactivity on a site just because of false perceptions that this is what Web users want.
I believe, for many websites, their web visitors are task oriented. They don’t want interactive features unless they can give them answers they couldn’t otherwise get.
Of course, there is the element of fun that is appropriate on some sites and can be beneficial on other sites. I used to work for a financial news website and our “When Am I Going to Die” mortality calculator was phenomenally popular.
However, another company I worked for wanted to put quizzes on the site to handle information otherwise available on the website. The topic wasn’t particularly interesting to begin with and putting it in interactive quiz format only made it more long and painful to read. But it was me, the web guy, who had to talk the non-webbies out of this approach.
Cheers,
Glen
Jeremy Gould says:
Added on May 26th, 2008 at 8:13 pmBravo. Couldn’t agree more. I get asked if the website will work on their phones before the question about customers
Karen says:
Added on May 27th, 2008 at 7:53 pmWell, first of all, those people “who like to talk about colour and mood and corporate identity” are called “designers,” and we need them in the mix, too! I’m a content producer but would never go so far as to say that colour and mood and design are unimportant. The useability of the site is “Job #1″ as they say, but a site also serves as an identity and marketing tool. Using your example, witness the recognizable Google logo and how it changes through the year according to various holidays or other important dates. Is that necessary, when I come to the site searching for something else? No, but it increases the value of Google to be so totally recognizable as a brand, and to amuse and endear its users along the way. (But without detracting us too much from our main goals, it’s true!)
And I agree with this essay as far as it applies to businesses and entities who are serving information or selling products. But “2.0″ and interactivity are being zealously utilized by large groups of younger users (ever heard of MySpace?). Students who use the university site where I work wonder why there isn’t more room for interactivity, sharing of ideas, blogs, comments, etc…. which means at least some users DO actively desire these features.
kenobi says:
Added on May 28th, 2008 at 3:21 pmI think you’ve forgotten to add the sentence ‘…Of course, this only applies to intranets.’
Ryan 2.0 says:
Added on May 29th, 2008 at 1:58 amA similar issue exists in the e-learning space. For example, I’ve talked about a similar issue in regards to text-heavy courseware: http://ryan2point0.wordpress.com/2008/05/23/text-aint-half-bad/ . Just because it moves or it looks pretty or is otherwise “interactive”, doesn’t necessarily mean it will achieve the learning objective. Sometimes simpler is better.