I get a lot of clients who are uncertain as to whether their website should be busy or simple. A busy looking site is one that has a lot of features and options, to the point where it might even look cluttered. A simple looking site in contrast has relatively few options, it has a relatively uncluttered look and feel.
Most of us readily understand that a large part of the answer comes down to the purpose of the site. But with probably more than 90% of websites built by professional development firms like Imagine Global Communications being commercial in nature, we’ll assume that the website is supposed to sell something. That something may be information, product, or services, but whatever it is, the website is there to sell it.
When first talking with the client, I’ve found that the majority of them favour an uncluttered and simple look for their website. This seems to make sense, it seems to be intuitive. We want people who come to our site to find it easy to use, we want them to readily find the key information on the site. Therefore it makes sense to have a simple uncluttered site, right?
The answer is “not necessarily”, followed by a suggestion to have a look at the homepages of sites like eBay, Amazon, Best Buy (products), and BBC, CNN, or MSN (information). These are some of the most popular sites on the web, but they are not simple, they are busy and appear relatively cluttered.
Why? What are the reasons for so many popular sites being cluttered? Are the reasons for their busy look the same reasons they are popular? And most importantly for you, do the answers to those questions hold any keys concerning your own website and whether or not it should be busy or uncluttered?
The purpose of this series of posts is to explore the answers provided for these questions that are supplied by so called “push versus pull” mechanics, and to understand what these answers mean for your website.
The first thing to do is explain what is meant by “push versus pull”. For some basic definitions click here for push, and here for pull. The broad concept of “Push verses Pull” is referenced elsewhere, for example, the dynamics of market forces, digital marketing, and information retrieval. For our discussion, focussed on building effective websites, we are looking at two entities; the website itself and the user who opens it in their web browser. A web page is more aligned with “push” if it can be seen to be taking the initiative, in that it is trying to direct the user to do A (or possibly B). A web page is more aligned with “pull” if it can be seen to be handing initiative to the user, giving the user a wide range of choice as to what to do next.
A web page is more “push” if it is trying to push something specific at the user, it is more “pull” if it allows the user to pull the information and content they desire easily and quickly.
In our next post we’ll look more closely at what defines whether a web page is more “push” or more “pull”. We’ll also review some popular sites to see where they sit in the “push v pull” concept.
Tags: effective websites, push v pull, website design, website keys
April 4, 2009 at 5:29 am |
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