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Croaking Frogs Kill Website Traffic
Maybe everyone involved in Website design and development should
be forced to visit http://www.nuttysites.com/.
The first time you visit, you may think, "Who on earth would
do stuff like this!" You can find the answer at Walgreens.
The people who are in the Nutty Sites Hall of Fame are there for
the same reason drugstores sell plastic Santas that say, "Ho,
ho, ho, Merry Christmas" every time you get near the front
door. Or worse yet, the frog that croaks every time you walk by.
In short, the drugstores' croaking frogs equal: http://www.dancinghamsters.com/
Too many Websites that represent otherwise professional organizations
have one or more features that prove that someone lacks common
sense, has too much time on their hands, or has no clue about
good taste. Consider the following. We'll start with common sense.
Music. Typically the only reason that music resides on
a Website is because somebody discovered that the home page could
be made to play music, so now it does, usually in bad taste, assaulting
the ears of visitors. Not for long, of course, as the visitors
leave, even if they do wait for the download.
Flashing images. Website programming can change one image
into another on a page while you are on that page. Some sites
keep displaying different photographs of people, for example,
hoping to keep us entertained. This approach creates two big problems.
One is that download times for the page typically increase dramatically
and unacceptably. A second problem is that the images often flash
by in such rapid succession you have to wonder if a quiz is next:
"Name the races, in order of their appearance, of the last
seven people we showed you in the last 7 seconds." An image
worth posting on a Web sit is an image worth leaving there for
several seconds (at least), so that the eye can take time to absorb
and appreciate the image for what it is. Sites that flash photographs
at us and then change them before we get a chance to appreciate
them just plain bug us. So we bug out.
Blinking lights, spinning wheels and other gadgets. Some
Website developers who are gadget guys have decided that the
best bet is to offer up a kind of cheapie Fourth of July fireworks
show while we're visiting. We get shown flashing lights, spinning
pinwheels, and any manner of other visual gimmicks that are supposed
to dazzle us and make us stay put.
It's a silly approach, really. Think about it. If we really do
spend any time looking at a pinwheel spinning red and green and
purple, then we're not getting any content from the site. Besides,
if we're in the mood for Fourth of July fireworks, we'll probably
just go to some place like www.fireworks.com
and pick our own fireworks to shoot off.
Pop-Up Windows. Another favorite gadget guy trick is to
get us to click on a button and then, instead of giving us a whole
new Web page, just throw a pop-up window into the middle of our
screen. The programmers who use pop-up windows have an uncanny
knack for positioning them directly over the part of the Website
we really want to look at. That means we have to take the time
to close the pop-up window so that we can get back to trying to
find what we were looking for to begin with.
Several decades ago, to complete graduate school I got a full
time job in retail because I was experienced in it. I ran a couple
of departments in a very small branch of the Harvard Coop and
was astonished one day to get a shipment of plastic cups containing
peanuts ready to be watered so they would grow, well, new peanuts,
one would guess. I called one of the Coop's buyers, Charlie, and
demanded to know why he'd sent me such lunatic merchandise. "People
will buy all kinds of garbage," Charlie said, "Just
put ‘em out there.". The truth is, a few people did
buy the plastic peanut cups, but I marked 50 of them down twice
to get rid of those and sent 250 back to Charlie, unsold.
People visiting a Website won't buy all kinds of garbage. Many
visitors won't buy any kind of garbage. It's just too easy to
go somewhere else. So if you ever get the urge to put some plastic
peanuts on your Website, just tune into www.dancinghamsters.com
and listen carefully until the urge passes. It will.
This article first appeared as a column written
by Dave Tedlock, NetOutcomes' president, for Inside Tucson
Business and/or the New Mexico Business Weekly.
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