I’m increasingly thinking that we make the web too complicated. Those of you who know me know I’m an advocate of Web 2.0 (unlike many I even like that label), RSS, AJAX and all those new things. I’ve worked on projects that use them heavily and have championed them to clients. The problem is that people get too caught up in these things, and forget the basics.
Like my post from a few weeks ago about fast loading web pages, we can forget the basics. I was reminded of this in a recent article by Jakob Neilsen called Fix the Basics First. I’m no Jakob Neilsen fan, but he makes good points time to time. To quote:
Companies champion technologies because they can be sold as products and consulting services. Go to any tradeshow and you’ll see plenty of booths pushing various fancy technologies — most of which will make very little difference to your bottom line. But each of these technologies has smooth-talking salespeople who will invite your executives out for a round of golf. In contrast, no trade show booth features Photographers’ Society representatives saying “clear photos move more products,” even though it’s the truth. Nor does the Writers’ Guild cold-call Internet managers to sell them on the value of bulleted lists.
For those of you thinking “but no one is selling AJAX/RSS/OPML” etc, read the article - he covers the glamour of new technologies in there as well.
Marketers are just as prone to this as techies. Marketers get caught up in brand integrity, across the line integration, expressing value propositions and other important things, but tend to forget the user in the process. It’s surprisingly easy to do - I’ve been guilty of it myself.
So, let’s not forget the basics. Here’s my list of basics, feel free to suggest more.
- Write the copy for the web, including using bullets, highlighting key phrases, and keeping it short.
- Have good quality pictures that support the copy.
- Make sure the pages load fast.
- Test across the common browsers.
- Use terms that are meaningful to the user, avoid corporate-speak and euphemisms.
- Remember that you are almost certainly not an exception to the rules, no matter how much you want to be. For example, if your content is too long, people probably won’t read it, no matter how “important” you are or your corporate initiative is.
- Test your site with average users (raise your hand if you are guilty of not doing this one! My hand is up high). It doesn’t have to be big and expensive, just find a few people and get them to do a few basic tasks. You’ll learn heaps.
- Give the user content they want.
Any more?