Jason Lynes

No one cares about your website

Those of us in the web design and development fields have a total crush on ourselves.  As I was called the other day, we are divas.  Our design senses are keen and superior.   Our development skills witty and crafty.   But there’s one huge problem to this love affair.

No one cares.

No, no one cares about our work.  We just make websites.  That thing you’re working on is just a website.  It’s no big deal.

What people are excited about is never about our work.  Sure, we love to aggrandize each other within our field.  But our users don’t give a crap.  When I hit up espn.com several times a day, I don’t marvel at the design innovation being put forth, or the amazing logo work, or the stupid grid.  I check how Kobe did last night.   And freak, baseball is about to start.   Never have I pulled up ESPN and critiqued the thing.  I don’t care about espn.com.  I care about Kobe.

This is why website design seems to have no impact or correlation to traffic or popularity.  It’s because it doesn’t.  It’s about the content. It’s about the utility.  It’s about what the users want to see and do, and how kickass you make them at some small part of their life.

Design’s one role

Design does play one large part in the success of a product or service.  It can get in the way.  Does it matter if your button is blue or green?  Does it matter how heavy a bevel you’ve put on there?  Does it matter how many lines of code your jQuery is?  No!  It does matter if people can’t find your content, or if they can’t find your Twitter link, or if your order button is nowhere to be found.

A few examples

Gary Vaynerchuck is a master of personal branding, self promotion, and using social media to further your message.  And he loves design.  In his book Crush It!, the only service he recommends purchasing is web design.  But check out his site.  It’s no modern marvel of design excellence.  Is it poor?  Not at all.  It’s perfectly adequate.  It’s actually leagues ahead of most websites, and it works.  It gets out of your way so you can absorb his message and make a connection with him.  Perfect.

My old friend Cameron Moll hasn’t changed his website in ages.  It’s way too old for him to call himself a real designer, right?  He didn’t even do all the work on Authentic Jobs himself!  Fact is, the man’s a genius.  It’s just a website.  The real money’s in his content, and people eat up anything upon which Cameron deigns to letterpress Bickham Script Pro.   He’s pure gold, and has nothing to do with his site.

Jeffrey Zeldman is the father of web standards and the reason many of us got into web design.  His website is a huge orange creamsicle.    It’s even a little gaudy. But hell if it doesn’t stay out of your way while you eat up every word that comes out of his mouth.   And he’s built a business pumping out excellent websites that do the same.

Google is a better web designer than you are

Another example is how stupid we can get with our website architecture.  A few months ago Jason Fried mentioned that he preferred Google’s version of your site  to your real site.  If you search for any major website or company on Google, you’ll find a handful of helpful links right under their website link.  I can assume this is pulled from Google’s vast data on which pages of your site their users are most likely to search for and find.

A search for Comcast reveals the following:

In contrast, a quick look at their real website shows us a different view of what they think is important to you:

What a mess!  Google is doing a better job of knowing what Comcast users want than they are themselves.  Literally, 8 links with no pictures is way more useful than this branded page with all sorts of links and advertisements.  Check your own site.  Chances are, Google is doing it better.

Which means, your stupid website doesn’t matter.  We, our customers, clients, and partners, are taking our websites way too seriously.   It’s just a website!  Figure out what information your users need, and figure out how to get it online without screwing it up.

What to do about it

My point is, stop taking yourselves so seriously.  Yes, make your work beautiful.  Do whatever you have to do to keep your designer title and still sleep well at night. But stop thinking you’re God’s gift to the internet, and stop mulling over design decisions for days and days when the most basic solution will do just fine.   It’s just a website, and it’s going to be alright.

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Design gone wrong

Design lesson #245:  No matter how curvy you make your windows, they mean nothing if some idiot comes in behind you and installs straight blinds.   Both of you look like fools.

(fun fact, snapped and posted with my iPhone)

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Best advice of the day

Via Hrrrthrrr:

It never hurts to have a second pair of prints on the crowbar.

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37signals is doing it right with Sortfolio

I’ve been impressed with 37signals’ Sortfolio web design directory since they launched.  Well executed, super simple, great business model, all great hallmarks of a 37s product.

But what’s really inspiring is their promotion and marketing technique.  The site isn’t cheap by way of webapps, but its a steal for promotion:  just $99 a month.  Like all of their products, they also offer a free version.

But last month they ran a promotion that included paying customers in their Deck advertising.  Deck ads cost a whopping $7600 a month, and delivers 90 million impressions a month.  With the promotion, they decided to share that spot with paying customers.  So for $99, pro accounts saw about 15,000 impressions each.  How many new customers do you think they added that week?

And today, they’re finding a firm to redesign their blog through their own site:

We thought it would be a good idea to eat our own dogfood and choose a firm from Sortfolio to do the redesign.

Genius.  I’ve never seen a webapp give customers so many compelling reasons to pay.  I’m not even in the freelance game and yet I still want to sign up.

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Flavors.me’s directory is totally inspiring

Fantastic examples in this Flavors.me Directory.  Someone give me an account.  Above, Hrrrthrrr, the Tumblr superstar and former SLCite.

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Why designers should code

Carsonified’s Mike Kus on 5 Good Reasons Why Designers Should Code:

Finally learning HTML and CSS in order to code my own designs was the best decision I ever made. Here are five good reasons why I think designers should code.

I’m a longstanding advocate of this generalist approach to web design.  I was floored to find out some designers don’t code.  Similarly I’ve always been amazed that specialized positions such as Business Analyst or Database Engineer exist.  Or why some developers don’t know HTML or Javascript.

Some types of people constantly seek learning and new technology, and other types seek a comfortable and safe place to drop anchor.   Similarly, some people will always be prepared for the next wave of opportunities, while others struggle when the rope they’ve attached to their anchor isn’t quite long enough to keep them afloat.

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Knights of Cydohmycrap

I don’t care who you are this is just awesome.

Muse, with “Knights of Cydonia”:

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Everyone is computer illiterate

From a conversation between Neven Mrgan and Dan Wineman on the ReadWriteWeb Facebook login hoopla:

The amount of information-ignoring here is just stunning. The degree of faith people put in Google’s top result makes Catholics look like hippies.

This is just the latest in a long line of articles bemoaning or celebrating the computing stupidity of the general public.  It apparently takes superhuman brains to login to Facebook, operate a blog, or even know the difference between a browser and a search engine.

Is this a problem with our user interfaces?  Or is this an increasingly obvious symptom of an aging baby boomer generation and their inability to operate anything above or including a clicker.

I think what we’re seeing now is a combination of both influences.  We nerds have successfully infiltrated every living room in the world with our windows and popups and input devices.  But we have also underestimated how many people – not just baby boomers – have ignored computers for the last 20 years and who are now completely unable to simply browse the internet.

Of course, unless we do something about usability, we may find ourselves in the same situation, perfectly fine with our computers but having ignored emerging tech and unable to use whatever my 7 year olds will have created, having grown up with a DS in one hand and an iPad in the other.

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37 Signals: All the wrong reasons for Stack Overflow’s VC chase

David Heinemeier Hansson nails it:

“A fool and his money will soon be departed applies equally to venture capitalists as it does to everyone else. If Joel and co. can negotiate a deal with Sand Hill road to give them a nice payout as part of the deal, this might well be even better than trying to shop around Stack Overflow for a sale that it’s probably premature for.”

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The value of design to startups

Design and marketing are way more important than engineering for consumer Internet companies, argues angel investor Dave McClure.

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