A bit too many clients ask for a great design to embrace their online presence. They would want the ‘wow’ effect configured into every square centimeter of their web page. The need for eye-candy does not seem to end.
But it really should.
Design is secondary. And design has a duty to perform i.e. to disperse the user’s attention is predetermined ways. I have said this before and I do not mind saying it again, it is that important.
Design is hardly the aspect of your website that is going to get people coming back; they may like the design, like it once or like it forever, but if the design is the only thing they like, they will not come back to your website, ever.
On the other hand, your website provides the users with what they want, and they will keep coming back, year after year. There is a reason that websites made especially for designers do not have, arguably, the best flash animation or the latest in CSS techniques implemented. What they do have is content that is relevant and designers keep coming back.
In my experience, clients would love to get to the nitty-gritty of design, ignoring the actual content of the website itself. The focus is purely on ‘looks’ and project delays are because of the back and forth of emails and design drafts. Seriously, design does not deserve this kind of attention. Design is important, yes. But not this important. Priorities need to be set straight before embarking on any project, and web development project is and should not be, any different.
The User Interface for the new Wordpress deserves to be noticed, not because it is good, which it might turn out to be, but because it is done-up by the people behind Happy Cog, a user-interface-design firm.
Wordpress has certainly come a long way, and the massive popularity of this blogging platform owes its credit not to the fact that it is opensource, but to the fact that it is so darn good-to-go and intuitive!
It plays nice with the search engines, the adminitration side was already well above average (even before being done up in the new 2.5 version), the themes that were available were so well thought out and well documented that learning web development itself became a charm!
I always have had a leaning towards ‘legally free’ software, and this platform has been my ‘weapon of choice’ to give to Treetech’s website clients. We actually write a theme for Wordpress, make some (a lot, in fact) tweaks with the WP core, and viola; search engine friendly and functionally sound website is ready!
Unfortunately, it has not been done up properly. In fact, it has not been done up at all!
A lot of the website visitors are going to the website packages, only to be perhaps see just one ‘package’ (where the offering is so vauge that it may make your head hurt).
This has happened to others as well; paying attention to others’ websites will make you neglect your own. And this will go against practically everything that you preach.
The user experience needs to be improved. God willing. Here we go…
The primary job of design is to ‘disperse’ your attention in predetermined ways.
If you want your customers to click on ‘buy now’, the design should, in one way or the other, work towards that. Many-a-times, a design will take all the attention with the content being pushed in the background.
And by design, I am not referring to graphic design only but also information design. The following video of people missing out on your message should emphasize the importance of establishing the focus and then working towards it.
The sheer penetration and availability of the Internet can pose some interesting challenges in the realm of design.
Imagine an information kiosk in a village somewhere near the small city of, say, Pakpattan (in the province of Punjab, Pakistan). Now, assume that someone who actually knew what he was doing designed and developed the kiosk and it is ‘live’ and updates itself using the Internet etc etc. And the kiosk provides information regarding agriculture. Brilliant. People just walk up, click on, say, pesticides, and see its application methods with regards to different crops. Or click on crops and see different methods of fertilizer applications, pesticide and water use etc. All good. But what if you were to design such a system?
The contact form being used over at Property Standard website is a solid attempt at bringing some of the best practices of User Friendliness to the local (read Pakistani) market. (The sheer disappointment I feel due to ‘big budget’ websites produced by none other than Pakistani ’software houses’ that lacks even the basics of user friendly interfaces and practical designs deserves another post, if not a series! And I got to learn to write smaller sentences. Anyways…)
Using the mootools framework, the form checks the validity of the email field with a simple message. The form can only be submitted once the email is typed in the correct format. The ‘perfect’ user experience will be that all the fields are checked for at least fresh input. But no one is aiming for perfection here, never! For thinking something is perfect automatically closes all doors for possible improvements, which always has room.
Wordpress has certainly come a long way, and the massive popularity of this blogging platform owes its credit not to the fact that it is opensource, but to the fact that it is so darn good-to-go and intuitive!
The page has been there for some time now.
