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Design the Jakob Nielsen way
UK-Netmarketing Weekly Round-up - December 15, 2000

Design crops up as a hot topic on the mailing list, more often than you might imagine for a marketing-related discussion forum. The difficult task of balancing cutting edge design and achieving all of a site's marketing objectives. Richard Gregory sparked the latest round when he asked, "In terms of design, which are currently the most successful web sites? This may be in terms of critical acclaim through awards but also in terms of site traffic."

Paul Canty replied, "You can't look at the design of a site without looking at it's content too. One surely affects the other... Also, perhaps you should define 'success' a bit more. Awards do not a good website make, and if its based on site traffic, then search engine design will become the next big thing on everyone's PC's, iTVs, handhelds and fridges. Dumbed down design from a Jakob Nielson perspective could well become the mainstream - but it doesn't make it right, big or clever..."

Neelesh Sonawane added, "Progressi ve, innovativ e and cool sites! Don't they push the visual literacy of the user further? Look what RayGun did for print design. The difference being though that print is a familiar medium. Jakob Nielson's vision of design ideal could be similar to us all not using apostroph es at all 'cause it's too damn confusing. Oh and also don't use words longer than nine letters or at least break them up so they are easier to understa nd."

Piers Beckley analysed the tabloid approach to presenting information. He commented, "...Let's take The Sun Newspaper. In November 2000, it had a circulation of 3,508,319 copies, making it the most popular daily paper in the UK It's estimated that total readership is about 3 times circulation figures, meaning that the Sun is read by approx 22% of the UK adult population. The Sun is written in small words that everyone can understand. ... It does not push the visual literacy of the user further. It is the best selling daily newspaper in the United Kingdom. ... If you want to make a profit, I would suggest that you listen to Uncle Jakob."

Jakob Nielsen, the usability guru, often elicits a love-him or hate-him reaction from subscribers to the list. Ashley Pomeroy is clearly the former, writing, "Personally, I think Jakob Neilsen is wonderful... We shouldn't even be discussing him, in fact. As advertisers our job is to attract the attention of the customer; Jakob is an information designer, not a marketer, and his philosophy approaches design from this perspective. From our perspective, design exists to attract the attention of the customer - from his perspective, design exists to assist the transmittal of information. To argue from a marketing point of view that Jakob Nielsen is fundamentally broken is to argue that a book should consist of a front cover, a back cover, and a publicity campaign."

Melanie Beech disagreed with Ashley's interpretation of Nielsen, emailing, "I disagree. From an e-commerce perspective, we also want for the customer to find information about products and services quickly and easily. IMHO, successful web marketing relies on an intelligent mix of the two: yes, we want our site and our brand to be distinct in appearance from other sites but, if we are to sell our products and services, we have to facilitate access to information that will favourably influence the buyer's purchasing decision. Ease of use and clarity of navigation are therefore essential if we don't want our buyers to go elsewhere."

She continued, "Clearly, design has other applications according to the overall objectives of the site, its market and its products/services, and there are some sites where a certain obscurity in the design is a plus for its target audience, but the majority of e-commerce sites rely on clear information architecture and painless user experience to sell products and encourage repeat business."

Lee Rickler's take on Jakob Nielsen was slightly less flattering. He wrote, "Mr. N is a muppet. If he had his way we would all be designing sites with a left hand, 4 piece nav bar and plain, non-formatted text on the right. Their would be no animations, videos, style sheets, WAP, PDA ... blah yadda. All his ideas are based on common sense, that's all, nothing magical at all. Although I do admire his brilliance for making a fortune out of telling people to do things the way they should be doing them in the first place!!"

Ian Collingwood responded, "If you'd absorbed any of the ideas behind User Centred Design you'd realise that the key to it all is TESTING. In other words you can use any technology you like, as long as you make sure that it works in the real world with real users. ... Nielsen does *not* exclude any technologies - he just thinks that designers should focus on winning over users, not winning industry awards. And if I was a company paying half a million quid for an interface that depended on users actually being able to use it then I suspect that I'd listen to Nielsen, and test, test, test until I knew that it worked. If Mr. N, muppet though he may be, (and let's face it he *is* a bit of a muppet...) can show that his site, with its 4-piece nav bar, plain text and rather bizarre colour scheme is easier to use than some Flash-bunny's self-indulgent wet dream of an interface then I'm afraid he's right - end of story."

Claire Swire

Poor old Claire Swire. One minute you send a smutty email to your partner (let's face it, most of us have at one time or another), the next you're on the front page of the The Times. Sara Waller emailed the list, asking if anyone had found out who she was.

Dave Cross replied, "The Register claim they have. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/15404.html and http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/15415.html"

Martin Lloyd added, "May shed more light on this. (in brief she may be real, she may have dated Ben, but the email is probably a hoax) Next question is how can we work out how to manufacture such virulent virus's for the purpose of selling stuff, and if it turns out that only saucy stories and porn spread at this rate which clients will use them?"

Illustrating the power of email forwarding, Andrew Petherick wrote, "According to page 7 of today's Metro, the law firm Norton Rose where Bradley Chait [Claire's erstwhile (ex?) boyfriend] worked is considering disciplinary proceedings. According to the paper, an estimated 1 million people read the email."

Unsurprisingly enough, http://www.claire-swire.com, is already up and running, showing there are still those around ready to spring into action to take advantage of the Internet's flexibility.

LINKS OF NOTE:
A quick round up of interesting, funny, useful and other links gleaned from the uk-netmarketing list, office gossip and other nefarious sources...we take no responsibility should you chose to click...basically, it's not our fault. Enjoy:

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