For websites, usability trumps eye candy

Posted on April 18, 2010 by Gary Chow | No Comments » | Trackback URL

The other night at the cinema I was forced to sit through a commercial which almost made me throw up.

The lengthy ad depicted a man running, jumping, falling and rolling over – filmed by a very shaky hand-held camera, and edited by someone with an extremely short attention span.

The whole thing made me nauseous. If this wasn’t bad enough, the vision was accompanied by thumpty-thump music played at ear-busting volume. At the end I felt ill and annoyed. I also had no idea what the commercial was about. What was the idea? What was the message? What were they trying to sell me? What was the company?

So what’s this got to do with website content and design?

The point I want to make is this: don’t let design and creativity swamp usability and purpose.

Too many websites place style over function. Like fancy TV commercials, they seem to be designed to win awards and to satisfy the cravings of the developer rather than to communicate and market the business.

Don’t get me wrong; a website has to look stylish and appealing but too much design can chew up your budget quicker than you can say ‘return on investment’.

So before you let your designer off the leash, think long and hard about what you want your site to achieve. What’s its purpose? You need to focus on your target user, and identify how they would use your site. You need to consider structural design aspects such as navigation, information hierarchies and content, long before you start turning your attention to the artistic side of things.