Designing Websites As If People’s Desires Matter
Maybe redesigning for the sake of redesigning is not enough: to communicate visually one must first have something to communicate about. Or maybe too many design schools are teaching students how to imitate successful styles instead of how to communicate visually.
…Many sites submitted had no concern for the user on the most basic levels. Rarely could you identify an idea or purpose behind the site, or name a possible user goal the site was intended to facilitate. There was no flow, no legibility, no usability. It wasn’t so much that the designers had contempt for their users as that they seemed never to have been taught to think about users at all.—Jeffrey Zeldman; The rebooter’s children go rebootless; 23 June 2005 11 am edt
I ordered a gift from a site which would make most designers cringe. Technically backward, aesthetically inferior, the site did what you are never supposed to do. The package they sent had beautiful hand drawn artwork on it and a personal note. (Copywriters know this as a stick letter). Post–purchase reassurance is more important to desirability design than winning awards for layout design.
The sale doesn’t end with the transaction and design doesn’t end at the layout.
AIDA …It Isn’t Just A Formula For Copywriting Anymore
The point of search engine optimization is purely to make your site look better than it really is. No matter how you look at this, to a search engine that is cheating.
—Search Engine Optimization – Just forget it; by Thomas Baekdal – Jul. 12, 2006Good content isn't stuff you write for the search engines. …Being creative isn't looking at what your competitor is doing and copying them. It's being a leader, not a follower.
—Realistic Search Engine Optimization Expectations; The Conversion ChroniclesThis content is excellently written from a search engine optimization perspective. The carewords (Spain, holiday, rentals, etc.) are prominent and repeated often. However, this content doesn’t seem credible to me. I don’t get a sense of trustworthiness off it. In fact, it reads to me like spam, and that made me quickly hit the Back button.
—Search optimization, not search engine optimization; by Gerry McGovern
Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. Copywriters know the formula well, yet few web designers understand the implications. Web designers know how to write for search engines. What started as a smart method for writing which would qualify for a high rank quickly devolved into a way to game the search engine. Far too often users can tell when forcing a high rank has substituted for earning rank through quality writing. Desirability is about the shopping experience.
The idea of the shopping experience is lost on usability people bound to get the user to the item they want and out: Task Efficiency. Physical stores long ago learned how visual merchandising keeps the user in the store. If the shopping experience is enjoyable, then more shopping means more buying: Task Desirability.
You don’t sell wrinkle cream
you’re selling desirable results
Attention is easily had: show someone doing a backflip. If you show how the shoes you sell absorb the shock, you are one step closer to desire. If you show how you tailor clothing keeps change, wallet and personal electronics from falling out, you’re no longer getting attention — you’re rewarding attention. Text and graphics need to work together to communicate. Pointless gimmicks make the user feel cheated for paying attention.
Promotion is usually not the step most websites forget. Having something desirable enough to be worth promoting and writing about is. Copywriting legend Eugene Schwartz understood desirability when he wrote “Copy cannot create desire for a product. It can only take the hopes, dreams, fears and desires that already exist in the hearts of millions of people, and focus those already existing desires onto a particular product.”
On the web a new kind of designer, visual merchandisers, are testing which visuals and copy produce sales. And the results show what customers find cool are products and product mix, offer, informative and compelling copy, customer service and post purchase reassurance. Designing a Unique Selling Proposition is much more a part of desirability design than the trendiest PhotoShop effect.
Branding The Client, Not Macromedia
If you create passionate users, you have to expect passionate detractors. You should welcome their appearance in blogs, forums, and user groups. It means you’ve arrived. Forget the tipping point—if you want to measure passion, look for the koolaid point.
—Physics of Passion: The Koolaid Point; Creating Passionate Users
Many layouts are much more effective in selling visitors on the latest web design trend. Consequently too much Flash animation has done more to sell copies of Flash and brand Macromedia than it ever did for the client employing them.
To be successful today you don’t need to improve your image, improve substance instead. The same digital economics driving down barriers to competition are driving up the value of disirable differentiation.
Related Article:
Visual merchandising and catalog copy
Resources
- Logo Misapplication explains “…the logo is the most abused, misapplied, misconceived, wrongfully distracting element of design and business today. I encounter too many people in business who believe that their logo should define them. The reality is that they should define their logo. For some reason it seems that this business fundamental is lost on most business owners.” A related onsite arcticle explains why logo designs are different from a business identity.
- Split decision: A/B testing online is more about content management than the CMS and more about merchandising design than most ecommerce systems are.
- Why the Tech Industry Needs to Change Its Language explains “Language will become a competitive advantage, and ultimately, those companies who can explain their offerings best will win.” A List Apart puts it more bluntly in Calling All Designers: Learn to Write!
- In The rebooter’s children go rebootless Zeldman notes “I am not worried about these mostly very talented designers; I am worried about what the schools are teaching them, and even more about what they are not teaching them.”
- Search optimization, not search engine optimization by Gerry McGovern, Realistic Search Engine Optimization Expectations and Search Engine Optimization – Just forget it the task of writing for search engines often crowds out the objective of writing copy that converts visitors to customers.
- The Koolaid Point; Creating Passionate Users