Web design: clarity is more important than persuasion
The most important thing a webpage can do is be crystal clear about exactly what you can do on that webpage.
The best word to describe people when they are on the Web is “impatient.” They are particularly impatient when they arrive at your website for the first time. They are asking themselves the essential question: “Is this a website I can actually do something on quickly and easily or is it just marketing?”
I had heard the following phrase from customers many times: “This is just marketing. I don’t have time for this.” On the Web, people are developing banner ad blindness, but they are also developing marketing-speak and communication-spin blindness. They see marketing as stuff that gets in the way, content that is annoying and unnecessary.
MarketingExperiments is a really excellent research organization. It recently stated that the first seven seconds a person spends on your website are crucial to success. “Millions of dollars are won or lost in these first few moments a visitor spends on your site,” it writes. It goes on to state that everything it has learned about website optimization can be summarized by these three words:
Clarity Trumps Persuasion
According to MarketingExperiments, there are three essential questions all pages must answer:
Where Am I?
What Can I Do Here?
Why Should I Do It?
“The chief enemy of forward momentum is confusion,” Marketing Experiments states. “One of the ways to overcome this inherent confusion is to hit the Back button.” The Back button is to a customer what a soother is to a baby. It’s very comforting to hit that Back button and get away from all that confusion.
““Clarity” tops the list of the key principles of design thinking identified by the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council,” Alice Rawsthorn writes for the New York Times in January 2010. Rawsthorn references John Maeda and his concept of “thoughtful reduction”.
The Web reflects a shift to service and, more particularly, a shift to self-service. To succeed in self-service you need a genuine understanding of and relationship with your customer. And you must also strive to give them a fast, simple experience.
I’ve just spent the last week in Seattle, the home of Starbucks. I’ve been told that Starbucks are investing millions in replacing their espresso machines. These machines are in perfect working order, so why are they replacing them? They want machines that are not as high, so that the server and the customer can more easily see and interact with each other.
The customer remains invisible to most web teams and that is the single greatest reason so many websites underperform. Understanding, relating to and developing empathy for your customer is one of the greatest drivers of clarity in communication and design. A lack of understanding of customers and a focus on the internal needs of the organization is at the root of most confusing, complex and verbose websites.
Get to truly know your customers and you are on the road to clarity.
When More Is Decidedly Less
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/25/arts/25iht-design25.html
Clarity Trumps Persuasion (MarketingExperiments)
http://www.marketingexperiments.com/improving-website-conversion/claritytrumpspersuasion.html
Mike Simpson says:
Added on March 29th, 2010 at 8:23 am“Clarity trumps persuasion” - abso-blooming-lutely.
One of the fundamental mistakes made by people with an old-school marketing mindset is to think of their website in isolation, rather than how the user sees it - which is one minuscule element of the entire vast web. The approach seems to be that once the punter is looking at your site, you’ve got them and can start working on persuading them.
While that may be true to some extent with print or broadcast, on the web you most decidedly haven’t ‘got them’. Just because somebody is looking at your site doesn’t mean they have invetsed any effort in it (not even the minimal effort required to choose and pick up a leaflet).
It doesn’t even mean they have made a conscious decision to be there. Lots of sites that a user visits are of no use and instantly discarded so a good site has to jump straight in. Not with some mindless, attraction-getting gimmick but with a genuine offer of something useful which matches what the punter is looking for.
And the punter has to be able to spot that instantly, which is where clarity comes in.
jenn_lee_ca says:
Added on March 30th, 2010 at 3:35 amClarity trumps persuasion…could not have said it any better.
Jason says:
Added on April 9th, 2010 at 1:57 amHad a Gerry Momemnt on the bus today. The back door in the middle of the bus on these fancy new buses does not open unless a passenger de-bussing opens it.
However, to open it one must wave there hand in front of it - wicked cool technology. I, however, being a new everyday bus person, started to read something like this on the door.
This is a door. Passengers can open this door. But they must do something first. When the light turns green, the passenger must wave their hand in front of the door to open it. Thank you for riding XXX Transit! See you tomorrow. ###-###-###.
I was first in line, I was trying to read all of this (it wasn’t exactly that word for word, but it seemed to take forever to figure out what I was supposed to do. I waved at it nervously after what seemed like several seconds of reading with impatient riders behind me - hoping it would open. Then it did. Whew, I didn’t look like a total idiot, but the sign was almost useless.
I wish it had just said:
Open the door by waving your hand here after the light turns green.
Ahhh, but we have to be thorough don’t we? And in the process, confusing?