What to expect when you're expecting...a website

A guide for companies thinking about creating a website.
By John Rossitter of www.rossitterconsulting.com, a Shreveport webdesign company

Part 1 |  Part 2 |  Part 3 |  Part 4 |  Part 5 |  Part 6 |  Part 7 |  Part 8 |  Part 9 |  Part 10 |  Glossary

Part 2

Know Thy Visitor

Know Thy Visitor:

Just like with planning a business, you need to understand who your online customer is. There are many factors that will play into how you design your website based on who you create it for. If you sell humorous T-Shirts online, you are going to use a much looser format than let's say a legal bookstore. You are actually faced with the difficult process of planning how to best spoon-feed information to the masses, and at the same time make a personal connection with each visitor. You are also faced with a very challenging adversary I like to call "Internet ADD".

Internet ADD is a syndrome that we all suffer from and is probably the fastest spreading disease in the world. Internet ADD is our inability to be satisfied with websites. It's that sense of hyper criticism you feel when a website takes too long to load. It's the feeling of disgust you experience when you go to a website and can't find a customer service phone number. It's the loathing you feel when you have visited the 10th website in a row that had nothing to do with what you were looking for. It's actually a well established fact that you have less than 8 seconds to make a lasting impression with your website.

Put yourself in their shoes for a minute. Your potential customer (Let's call him Sam) is looking for a company just like yours to sell them the widgets they need. Sam has opened his web browser and started Googling for widgets. The first factor working against you is that search engines like Google are promoting other business willing to pay them for targeted advertising. Sam has now seen 15 ads for companies who sell widgets, and not even opened a single website.

The first website he opens is actually a widget distributor in India, but he doesn't know that yet. He spends a good 3-5 minutes on their site and psychologically commits to purchasing a product from them. It's not until he starts to checkout that he realized that the price is in Rupee and not US Dollars. He immediately returns to Google and furiously types Widgets in the search bar.

Sam, now more leery than before goes onto the next website, which is actually a blog site that only talks about widgets in an article from 4 years ago. He spends a few minutes here before he realizes that there are no widgets to be bought. Now frustrated, Sam returns to Google again and types Widgets in the search bar. He then makes it to your competitor's website that is more than willing to sell him widgets at a fair price. The problem this time is that your competitor's website runs entirely in Flash, and Sam's web browser does not support it.

By the time that Sam has actually made it to your website he's already aggravated. He has spent the last 30 minutes of his life in search of the perfect Widget, but encountered only rejection and confusion. His mental state is delicate, and he's become desperate to find this elusive widget. At this point he's not reading anymore, in fact his eyes are only scanning images, and he's looking for a reason to even stay on your website. His attention span has diminished to the point of making snap decisions of whether your site is just another in a long chain of disappointments.

X= ((N*H) *A)*I
X= Internet ADD Factor
N= Number of websites out there like yours
H=Hours in a day
A=Aggravation Factor
I=Search Invisibility
*Internet ADD Formula

Will Sam actually stay on your site and purchase his Widget from you? The answer to this question all depends on how well you are able to quell the symptoms of his Internet ADD.

Unfortunately your website will be judged like this every day. It's sad and it's unfair, but it's just the way of the world. It's your job to make sure that the information you present on your website clearly and quickly lets people know that they are at the right place. In reality your website is going to have one of 2 effects on visitors. It's either going to help them, or further fuel their Internet ADD.

So we have clearly established that your web visitors are fickle, but there is another prevalent trait commonly displayed called which is called stupidity. Web visitors have been trained since day one, not to think. This is not their fault, as the traditional internet user experience is a passive activity, whereby they are receiving information more than providing it. So you cannot expect them to be at their best when required to "do something". In most cases you have to provide them with "shiny-red-candy-like buttons", and a clear call to action.

In actuality, your visitors are not dumb. They are simply conditioned to expect certain things to be done in certain ways on the internet. For example, we are conditioned to expect the "shopping cart" icon to be at the top right part of the screen. So the best thing you can do is design your website around proven practices and design patterns.

Part 1 |  Part 2 |  Part 3 |  Part 4 |  Part 5 |  Part 6 |  Part 7 |  Part 8 |  Part 9 |  Part 10 |  Glossary

-Rossitter Consulting is a Shreveport-Bossier City web design firm that offers affordable web design and hosting. Click HERE to read more