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When Creating Web Sites, Beware of Bells and Whistles
October 15, 2007

The key to today’s Web strategy is “effectiveness.” To that end, when deciding what “bells and whistles” to add to your site keep in mind this cardinal rule of Web design:

• Web site features should not impede fast, efficient site navigation

What do I mean by “bells and whistles”? Basically, any extraneous features aside from basic text and graphics—this can include rich media, such as video or Flash animation; pop-up windows that either ask for log-in or registration information or are ads; music or other audio that plays as soon as you land on a site, and other such elements.

This is not to say that these elements are “bad”; quite the contrary. Depending on the goals of your Web site, they can provide valuable user experiences. But there is one key point to remember when it comes to marketing, and this probably flies in the face of what they teach in business school but common sense prevails: most customers do not want a deep, meaningful user experience; they want to get the information or products they’re looking for quickly and efficiently and then leave. Engaging customers is valuable, and some do like to linger. But the “deep, meaningful user experience” should be optional and should not get in the way of customers (or potential customers) accomplishing their missions expediently.

There are other, more pragmatic reasons for going easy on the bells and whistles. Not all users have the fastest computers or Internet connections (despite the heavy penetration of broadband and Wi-Fi). On slower equipment, a Flash animation or video can bog the user down. At the same time, not all browsers handle rich media the same way, if at all, which not only make the bells and whistles ineffective but can physically impede access to the rest of one’s site.

Here is a case in point. I produce the (print) promotional materials for the Saratoga Film Forum, a local arthouse cinema in Saratoga Springs, New York, and part of that work involves hunting down film synopses and movie stills. I rely almost entirely on Internet Movie Database, and have found that movie studios' official sites are the least useful—simply because they are so full of rich media (video clips, trailers, etc.) that it is often impossible to find the very simple things I am looking for. This site, for the movie Rocket Science, is one of the better examples of an "official" movie site, but it still takes several levels to get to where I want to go. Very few movie sites are this intuitive.

Another case in point. I was making hotel reservations online some months ago and right after I was done, a window popped up comprising a live chat with a reservation agent who offered me a discount if I answered a couple of questions. A great idea—but it didn't work with my browser! I kept trying to respond but wasn't able to type in the window. The person on the other end kept typing "Hello? Hello?" but I was unable to do anything. I finally had to give up.

Pop-up ads, needless so say, are almost universally reviled. In fact, a couple of years ago, walking through the software aisles of Best Buy or Comp USA you could find no shortage of pop-up ad elimination software. It’s a safe bet that a Web site element is ineffective when tools for eliminating it are vastly popular.

Take this site, my alma mater’s athletics site. When I go to this site, nine times out of 10, all I want to do is find out when a game starts. And yet, before I can do that, I am barraged by pop-up windows and audio and video feeds that physically prevent me from accessing the very simple information I am looking for. So far from engaging me in an effective way, it makes me resolved to actively avoid that site and find alternative means of finding the information I need.

In the Industry Measure’s latest Internet Design and Development survey, we asked professional Web designers and developers what the most and least effective Web site features were.

The top items deemed very effective are:

• PDF (cited by 50% of all survey respondents)
• e-commerce (29%)
• streaming video (20%)

The top items deemed very ineffective are:

• pop-up advertising (cited by 27% of all survey respondents)
• banner advertising (15%)
• cost-per-click advertising (14%)
• licensed content (14%)

A detailed analysis of all these survey data found that the most effective items are those that facilitate the dissemination of content—PDF, FTP, video, and e-commerce—while the least effective items are all forms of advertising. It’s true that advertising is not effective for a client’s Web site per se, but it does help pay for the site, so it’s likely thought of as a necessary evil.

The take aways from this discussion are:

• Don’t force users into a deeper online experience than they may want; that is, provide additional levels of content and engagement, but not at the expense of basic site navigation and usability.
• Don’t let bells and whistles keep customers from getting at the information they want.
• Don’t let your site’s elements “hijack” a user’s browser with pop-ups, unwanted audio and video, etc.
• Always provide a “skip intro” or “skip ad” link so users have the option of dodging rich media.
• Give users the option of playing audio or video rather than having it activate immediately upon landing on your site.

Advances in Web development technology have made it extremely easy and efficient to add “bells and whistles” to a site, but the fine line marketers walk with these elements is to ensure that they provide an effective, meaningful experience to users and don’t just irritate and thwart them. As always, when designing and developing a site, visiting it as if one were one’s own customer is the best way to gauge the effectiveness of design elements.

Posted by Richard Romano on October 15, 2007 | Comments (0)