Good Web Design is often Invisible
Seth Godin posted a well trodden path today with what is the first question a web designer must ask? While it might not be the first question I would ask it’s definately one that’s in the room the moment you enter – and most of us already know it. The odd thing is how often it’s not asked at all… is the site about being noticed or about functionality and facilitation of a business process? Good design should meet the success criteria relevant to the situation.
In other words, when you go to the client’s website, is the intention to make the site visitor go WOW or is it to facilitate the site visitor’s mission for buying a new packet of pens, or renting a video or some other business process?
So, in most situations, good web design isn’t about making the most jaw-dropping portfolio piece for the web designer’s career advancement and positive peer review. The web designer is a facilitator and not the reason for the website – it’s about the business. It’s about sales conversions. It’s about making money. Often good design, even brilliant design, is in making the design invisible or transparent.
When you sit and think about that assumption for a while you should come up with the realisation that in most cases when you notice design it’s for the wrong reasons. Either the design got in your way or obfuscated information or functionality – that damned design, you’ll say! But when you get into something really well designed you have the smooth experience that only a transparent good design can provide. That’s what most people need in most situations.
WOW and POP are all good in context, but we have to realise that none of this work is about us. We’re a service industry. The job is about the client, the client’s business case and their processes, and how to increase their return on investment. They definately don’t want to pay you to make a beautiful unusable distracting novelty nobody revisits.
A related question often never asked is – how are we going to measure the success or failure of the new website? In improved sales volume? Wider sales area (internationalising the business)? Improved exposure (advertising)? Increased target segment awareness? Increased referrals? Higher membership? What exactly defines success. Because you need to know exactly what it is you’re designing and building before you get out the hammer and nails…
