July 19, 2004 | View Comments (11) | Category: Web Experience
Summary: To inform your audience of your message you have to emotionally draw them in. Easier said than done it seems.
A great designer has the power to draw users into their site. A great writer possesses the power to emotionally involve people into what they are saying. We understand the power of design and how it can effect our audience emotionally, but many of us forget that the words on the page can hold even greater emotional appeal.
Constantly striving for a state of minimalism that is both attractive and conducive to the goals of the user is an ever present struggle for any designer. I look at this site and since I have seen it everyday, it is difficult for me to grasp any emotional value that it may contain. However, I can only hope that the words that grace the screen help to capture you emotionally enough that you decide to return.
An example of a design that draws people in emotionally would be the previous Design By Fire. Ignoring what people have said about the layout, I also wonder if they feel less of an emotional pull towards the site since the strong orange is not as present as the previous design. Or maybe there is a stronger emotional pull now because the site is less harsh (color-wise) than before. Unfortunately, these types of questions are impossible to answer for everyone so you have to listen to the vocal few in the crowd.
What can be said about Andrei's site though is that his content pulls you in emotionally. Very rarely is their an entry he writes that you feel neutral about. You either strongly agree with him or wonder what the hell was he drinking when he wrote it, but in all cases you feel emotionally drawn towards the content.
If you can tap into the emotions of your audience then you are more than likely on the path to a successful site. Community creates emotion (eg. eBay) that helps to bring users back day in and day out. Writing style also helps to bring users back even though many will wonder what made you so popular in the first place ;-).
The goal of informing an audience is to convince them of the relevance, importance, and timeliness of the message. It causes the audience to become open to the key insights that will be delivered in the invoke stage of the message. It makes them eager to hear the call to action so that they can respond.
–– Train of Thoughts: Designing the Effective Web Experience
For me, this is what separates many of the top blogs from the rest. Design is useful in attracting users to your site, but after that the design takes a backseat to the content. Many blogs have informative content that becomes very dry and therefore lacks the emotional appeal that is required for me to return.
Imagine if the CSS specs were originally written in a way that attracted designers to them, which in turn caused them to want to learn all about CSS. The history of CSS begins in 1994 and honestly we have made little progress from a technology standpoint and merely a dent from an adaption standpoint and I think part of the reason is because the CSS specs are about as fascinating as recoding a 20,000 page site from tables to CSS.
It took the literary skills of Zeldman to make people actually care about this stuff. His writing brought you in emotionally and made you want to try web standards. When we try to get people to learn standards we shouldn't give them material that feels like you are reading through a biochemistry textbook, but stuff that flows like a great piece of fiction.
Again looking at the top blogs (in your mind) question which ones help to pull you in emotionally with their writing and which ones you go to just for the design. From blogs to company sites to ecommerce sites it's your ability to inform your audience through emotional appeal that will help make the site successful. Many people wonder how to make a popular blog and in reality this is really all you need (and maybe some luck).
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Heh, more like all sites will now be built with a combination of webstandards and a flash header.
Scrivs (http://businesslogs.com)
Paul,
At the end of the day, the only reason I read anyone's blog is for the content. Design in terms of making the content easy to read is important, but additional design is secondary to me.
Plus, I read all my blogs via Bloglines, so I only get to see the design if I click through to read the comments.
In an RSS-based world, content is definitely king.
Christian (http://www.smileycat.com)
Funny you should mention that because in the entry I was going to mention how with the proliferation of RSS that your ability write content that pulls people in becomes even more important.
However, with blog software and how easy it is to write something in 5 minutes and press Publish, the quality of writing on the web drops and people wonder what they could do better. Admittedly I get caught up in this at times and Mark references this in his entry Blogger Burnout: From the other side of the aggregrator.
Scrivs (http://businesslogs.com)
I look for both when choosing to read or visit a site.... specially when i am looking to read about design.
It is sometimes hard to get through a website when it isn;t apealing.
So I say the combination of both = success.
or like Christian mentioned above... in the RSS world... design doesn't matter.
Alex Giron (http://www.cssbeauty.com)
I wonder how far will RSS proliferate? If it ends up that we visit all websites through an aggregator it will certainly be true that 'design doesn't matter' any more and visual designers will all be out of jobs. Is the internet de-evolving back into it's text-only precursor? I'm curious to know what you and your readers think.
Jim Amos (http://graphikjunkie.com/)
You are forgetting about the sites that people have to actually interact with. Those will always require designers. However, the web might move back to desktop apps that are more easily configurable than web pages and offer better performance.
RSS is good for content based sites for sure, but as long as we expect to develop a community with people leaving comments and visiting the site through search engines then design will matter.
If a user comes to my site from Google for example, and is attracted enough by the design that he decides to subscribe to my feed then the design did its job. So yes design will always matter I think.
Scrivs (http://businesslogs.com)
That's the kind of news I like to hear :)
You're probably right.
Jim Amos (http://graphikjunkie.com/)
Design is the mouth-watering tease, the invitation. Content is the meal. Whether that meal satisfies or not depends on both the quality of the writing and how successfully the designer's attitude, atmospherics and functionality appeal to the target market.
Good design is responsible for catching the eyes of the right readers - matching like minds. Then, it should offer physical support to the writing by providing easy navigation and useful, clever touches.
Really good design + really good content = the perfect feast.
Ann (http://wwwthinkingwomansdiary.com)
Definitely good writing will increase the chances that people will keep coming back to read what you write. And the passion behind the writing - if you're interested in something, you'll do a lot better at making it interesting to other people than if you don't really care. Humor doesn't hurt either.
My favorite weblogs are, of course, the ones that have beautiful design, good writing, and subjects I'm interested in. asterisk*, dooce, Dunstan's blog - they have the whole package going for them. But there are plenty of other sites I like to visit that don't have a great design, or the most perfect spelling and grammar.
Jennifer Grucza (http://jennifergrucza.com)
I know I'm a bit late on this thread, but there's also a point that was missed about design vs. RSS: most people don't know what a feed aggregator is (parents in the room, anyone?).
So for most people the web will still be, for a long time, a visual world not very far from print. My parents, for instance, have not come to the full realisation yet that a website can be interacted with through commenting systems. Because for them, the web is done by publishers, in the exact same meaning as print.
Thus design is still important for them, as they won't know they've got the control over typography through bookmarklets or even that most sites can be read without even 'surfing' to them with RSS.
I'm sure I'm not the only one to have not-so-savvy parents. ;)
s t e f (http://www.nota-bene.org/)
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#1
Not very on-topic, I'm sorry, but I decided to follow the old ALA link and found this gem:
"Who cares?
If you’re a web designer, you do. In six months, a year, or two years at most, all sites will be designed with these standards. (Or they will be built with Flash 7.)"
-Zeldman Feb 2001
:-D
Brian Andersen (http://www.brian-andersen.dk)