You are Here — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -What you are looking for is in there somewhere.

Complicated Websites

Maybe your website is extremely complicated. Maybe tens of thousands of people visit every day to do many, many different things. The same rule applies. If you know who’s visiting and why, you can clear a simple path for them to succeed. You can do that for everyone, with a single design. Almost always.

If your website is really, truly, extremely complicated, I would recommend that you re-conceive the whole thing. Break it up, shrink it down, or do whatever is necessary to clarify that mess. Think about who’s visiting and why. Group them into logical segments. It will focus your efforts.

They say that, “inside every fat book is a thin book trying to get out.” Well the same is true of websites. Or apps. Or arguments. Or many things.

Regarding complex applications, I used to work for a guy named Karl who said, “If it costs more than $30,000 or takes more than 3 months, we’re not going to do it.” That is a challenging rule to follow. More than anything, it challenges you to edit, clarify and streamline. In the process, you’ll probably find the value that you and your visitors have been seeking the whole time.

Is it Better? Or Just Different?

Different and Better

An important benefit of asking the question, “Who’s visiting and why?” is that it gives you the basis for evaluating your work. Is the revision you’ve just made actually an improvement? How do you know?

If the targeted visitor can accomplish their goal faster, with less frustration, while smiling, then it’s better. You can watch visitors, time them, assess their frame of mind, record their user errors and your own system errors. No need to get fancy. As long as you’re consistent, any method of measuring their experience will tell you if it improved.

If you ask people to test your website in this way, check your ego at the door. Nothing is as humbling as watching someone use a website you wrote.

Be the Clarifier

According to Foursight, an innovation company with a very impressive client roster, there are four thinking styles people use when problem solving: the Clarifier, the Ideator, the Developer and the Implementer. If you’ve worked on a lot of teams, you’ve no doubt seen the mercurial type who contributes great ideas but is pretty useless in implementation. Or conversely, some people can really get the job done but only if you explicitly tell them what the job is.

You can bring out your inner clarifier by asking, “Who’s visiting and why?” It will lead you to examine your project from many angles and turn it over and over in your head. For interesting problems, this can take a long time. Then sometimes, from a certain angle, a certain rephrasing, a certain context, all the confusion and ambiguity simply falls away the the true nature of the problem reveals itself. The issue becomes clear. That is a very enjoyable moment. And that’s when you start coding!