I built a site three years ago. One of the earlier small business sites
doing retail sales (Rockport Shoes). The site was created with no gimmicks,
just text and pictures for the prodcts, simple navigation and few xtra
images (links in text more than in buttons). Of course, back then there
were fewer options for design. The owner has been very happy with the
results, constantly gets compliments on the site and the ease of use, and
does very well as an adjunct to his bricks and mortars store.
As a result he is very loath to allow me to change anything except to edit
the product line. My tendency is to want to redo the logo (very basic, and
rudimentary compared to what I think I could do now), add cool looking
buttons, do a little javascripting, etc. Naw, he says. Don't bother.
On the other hand, we spent a lot of time optimizing the site for placement
in search engines under a few keywords. He monitors the site's placement in
the top search engines and when he perceives a drop we try to figure out a
way to get it back up.
Thus, his traffic and sales continue to grow.
On the other hand, I am working on stuff now that is intended for a
specific, narrow audience of high bandwidth users. In fact, built in to the
idea is an somewhat subtle effort to frustrate visitors with 56k modems and
slower to encourage them to explore the ability to upgrade to cable modems.
One would also assume that people with cable modems would be more likely to
have the latest browser and plug-ins or be more willing to get them since I
can dl the complete Netscape in less than five minutes.
Try that on a 56k modem!
So, once again, the intended audience and the intended affect on that
audience is all imperative in making design decisions. It's just hard
sometimes to pull back from all the toys I have loaded up on my machine
when what is called for is a directory of hypertext links to some shoes...
>So anyway, I simplified the design, eliminated the gimmicks, and have
>pretty much left the site alone these past couple of years. And my dad's
>firm continues to receive complimentary feedback about what is really a
>very basic and unremarkable site.
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