IMHO - different tasks require different perspectives and different
goals for the site. In my situation where we have consumers (users)
that do not contribute to the profitability of the site other than to
attract the eyeballs for advertising, the user experience group's
mission is somewhat in conflict with that of the ad sales group and
to even some extent with the SEO group. Our goal is to match up the
site to consumer's research and buying process, not to force them
into what the industry or advertiser might be driving. We believe
that if the site is compelling, the users will find their way to it,
and the CPM's will happen over the long run. The ad folks often want
us to design pages to accommodate and attract the advertisers.
Meanwhile the SEO staff is wanting to make the page optimal for
search engines. While there are similarities, designing for SEO,
designing for advertisers, and designing for users will render
different pages. Each of these three groups needs to bring their
expertise to the table... and let executive management take on that
'god's eye' perspective and render judgement that balances those
separate agendas.
One of the most disturbing trends that I see is designer's rolling
over on the user experience. I see designers that are all too
empathetic with the pure goals of profit and the business... trying
to take a short cut to immediate and short term profit that only
destroys brand awareness, consumer loyalty and inevitably, the longer
term sustainability and profitability of the site. This trend can be
seen sites like about.com (and plenty of others) that used to have
great information and now focus on attracting visitors from search
engines and deliver very little value to users.
Specific to your question, yes the design team should work to not
only the constraints of the business, but the goals within reason.
In our case I am using some extensive background in consumer behavior
(research primarily from the psych field) and mapping our sites'
functionality to typical consumer behavior in our target market. It
effects both the interactions and information architecture. So far it
has helped in managing the business model in a way that works for
both the consumer's goals, and the monetization goals of the business
(paper and conference talk to come soon I hope).
Mark
On Jul 6, 2008, at 3:57 PM, Robert Hoekman Jr wrote:
Purely philosophical question:
I've been studying social psychology a lot lately, and have become
incredibly interested in the persuasiveness of sites and
applications—how to
make them more persuasive, what makes them so now, etc. But it
makes me
wonder:
Should the persuasive elements of a site design be left to marketers?
Assuming you work for a company who has a marketing department and
a UX team
that are separate from each other, how much should the UX team be
involved
in the design of persuasive elements?
-r-
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