Oct
12th
A Toaster and a SocialGo Network
By ezra vancil
Take a look at your toaster. Now your DVD player. Next, your coffee
machine. They have some solid gold advice for your social
network.
It might sound crazy, but all of these appliances have design standards, and the Web is no different. Consider the 'play' button on your old VCR. When users know what that button is, they can recognize it on their DVD players, MP3 players, online videos and more, and instantly know how to use them.
Take a look at your page stats over at crazyegg.com and your Google analytics - You may be shocked at how impatient your users are. No one wants to buy a toaster they don't know how to use. On the Web, that means going over to another site.
How do you apply these standards to your site?
- Prioritize.
Your toaster has one giant button to push the toast down and to warm up the coils. That's the first priority. The other controls are for advanced users - those who want to control the darkness of their sliced bread.
Prioritize your site and think about what they'll most likely be looking for (or what you want them to be looking for) on every page. Make sure that option is highlighted in an easy-to-find way. Let users fine-tune if they want to, but make access and interaction as fast and simple as possible.
- Stay traditional, even if you don't.
We talked about that big green triangle on the DVD players, the universal signal to users that "this starts the movie."
You may have the next killer site that will take the world by storm, with new ideas and a new architecture all its own. That's great. But it won't matter if no one knows how to use it. If you can use a button, use a button; if you can use a text field, use a simple text field.
If you have a stunning, simpler idea for how these things can work better, try them out, but do so carefully. Once you understand what users are looking for, you can play with the rules, or present them in a new way. But you must learn what works for your users first, and work to those expectations.
Hopefully all this talk has left you seeing your toaster, and your Web site, in a way that leaves you hungry to improve - or, at least, hungry for some toast.
It might sound crazy, but all of these appliances have design standards, and the Web is no different. Consider the 'play' button on your old VCR. When users know what that button is, they can recognize it on their DVD players, MP3 players, online videos and more, and instantly know how to use them.
Changing the Web standards of your network is like forcing your user to learn a new language.It asks them to give up on ideas that they are familiar and comfortable with, and that means they spend more time learning how to interact with your site and less time actually interacting with it.
Take a look at your page stats over at crazyegg.com and your Google analytics - You may be shocked at how impatient your users are. No one wants to buy a toaster they don't know how to use. On the Web, that means going over to another site.
How do you apply these standards to your site?
- Prioritize.
Your toaster has one giant button to push the toast down and to warm up the coils. That's the first priority. The other controls are for advanced users - those who want to control the darkness of their sliced bread.
Prioritize your site and think about what they'll most likely be looking for (or what you want them to be looking for) on every page. Make sure that option is highlighted in an easy-to-find way. Let users fine-tune if they want to, but make access and interaction as fast and simple as possible.
- Stay traditional, even if you don't.
We talked about that big green triangle on the DVD players, the universal signal to users that "this starts the movie."
Design a DVD player without that triangle somewhere and you're guaranteed to confusepeople.
You may have the next killer site that will take the world by storm, with new ideas and a new architecture all its own. That's great. But it won't matter if no one knows how to use it. If you can use a button, use a button; if you can use a text field, use a simple text field.
If you have a stunning, simpler idea for how these things can work better, try them out, but do so carefully. Once you understand what users are looking for, you can play with the rules, or present them in a new way. But you must learn what works for your users first, and work to those expectations.
Hopefully all this talk has left you seeing your toaster, and your Web site, in a way that leaves you hungry to improve - or, at least, hungry for some toast.
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