The Catalog of Unfindable Web Widgets
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Your Story as Unfindable Web Widget
Think of marketing as storytelling, the story customers tell themselves about a product or service. Which allows me to (again) bring up scenarios and personas as leading design tools.
Web Widgets Could Help You Select A Gift
Web sites can support the shopping process, rather than merely supporting the financial transaction at the end. For example, Bath & BodyWorks’ Gifts By Recipient feature helps you shop for the fashionista on your list.
Web Content Is Easy. Desirable Web Copy Is Not.
We know the secret of making a shirt for people who don’t like wearing dress shirts. A true custom shirt, known to the trade as full English made to measure is crafted entirely from scratch. Twenty-two measurements distinguish a shirt which moves with you. A completely new pattern is made for each customer and kept on file. The slope of the shoulders is a crucial measurement, since nine out of ten men have uneven shoulders. Collars are the areas of least tolerance — mistakes are acutely felt. So collar measurements are made to an eighth of an inch. And if you like wearing shirts, these are the things you’ll love about wearing ours.
Fanciful Web Graphics Need Something: A Backstory
Original graphics are as unfindable as any widget. Sure, you can find copies of copies which are technically different, not creative or interesting. On occasion, you do see a creative looking site where graphics illustrate concepts from the text. The J. Peterman Catalog doesn’t just have product descriptions. The text puts each piece into a context fitting Peterman’s own symbolism — products are illustrated, not photographed. From larger than life figures to fictional company mascots or spokes-humanoids, story and image can be more desirable than either alone. If you have to “check out this Flash animation” you’re branding Macromedia and Adobe, not the company using Flash or PhotoShop products to communicate. Backstory development for the rock band Alida can apply to any product or service. Even a vacuum cleaner can have a backstory.
Somber Business Sites Need Something: A Little Funology
One part of desirability interaction has been termed Funology. Few in the human computer interaction (HCI) camp explore it like Alan Dix. This branch of desirability is concerned with playability, and has advanced business applications like game theory. On a simpler level, a site can use a business building game to get visitors thinking about how to innovate with technology. For example a dentistry practice with the tagline “We Cater To Cowards,” might explain how they use VR goggles. One dentist who uses these goggles reports patients relax faster as they watch movies. Another dentist has hooked the goggles into a head cam he wears, so the curious patient/user can tune in and see what he’s doing. Since the user need not talk during procedures, work moves faster and is better explained. Other technologies like electric anesthetics avoid the pinch of the needle. Used together these present a strategic, coordinated technology proposition for customers, and makes technology use a little fun. (Hint: Games on business sites aren’t unfindable, their focus on building the business is. Develop gaming as an alternative channel to deliver the business communication, not a diversion from it.)
Tell Your Story
Useit.com’s list of site mistakes ranks unclear statement of purpose as number one. Essentially the same thing Nielsen has said before, sites do not put facts in context for users. Yet Laura’s Lean Beef gets out the story of the business. The University Hospital turned special bloodless surgery procedures for Jehovah’s Witnesses into a business proposition desirable to a larger audience. Findable is a list of features which could apply to every business in the category. Unfindable is the unique story of what would be missing if a particular business didn’t exist.
Unfindable Business Identity
Most business identity designs found on the web can be classified as nondescript to the point of unfindability. In contrast the Geeksquad website weaves business identity with a sense of mission and effusive personality. Graphics and copy supports the theme; which could easily be reduced to a clever name and vacuous slogan — never to be brought up again in word or deed. One of the worst offenders: hair salon site designs. It only takes comparison to a real business identity design to tell the difference. The word identity suggests a personality people can relate to and pick out from a crowd.
Desirability Is Design With A Difference
In most cases computer systems can churn out the adequate. For the most part, site designs are adequate. …The code is adequate. …Graphic design is adequate. Now the challenge becomes making the pieces join up to build upon one another, creating a distinctive and compelling message. Customers expect the barely adequate, but go out of their way to find the special, and to buy the desirable.
If you want to discover how desirability and design can help you form an identity in your customer’s mind, contact me at the link below.