Ah the never ending debate of form versus function. In a site design, the subject will come up again and again, most often in the form of dollars spent. Do you spend more money on a good looking website or a good functioning website. If you’re fortunate enough to have the right people behind its development, you’ll get both, which is precisely what most clients want in the first place. As though it may seem to be commonplace to desire both form and function in a website, there are many clients whom ignore form all together, at least more than those whom ignore function.
Clients can ignore form in two ways, either by not caring or by forcefully pressing designs that they want to be installed (and not necessarily what their market or business needs). Unfortunately, both of these can be detrimental to their website’s success. And when we talk about form and aesthetics, what we’re really getting at is how the website makes the consumer feel. It is the vibe that the website passes through to the consumer. This vibe can be any number of feelings… trust, prestige, low price, etc. That feeling helps the consumer to believe your message (function). Essentially, the look of your website becomes a warm-up for your visitor before the big game… the function and message. This warm-up happens instantaneously, right as the user see the website it is instantly judged and a vibe is sent.
Let’s put some examples to use. We’ll start with the vibe of the site since that it what the end goal here is.
- A bank wants to instill trust above all else in its visitors. A trustworthy design is not necessarily artistic or on the verge of being brand new (or what might be called a Web 2.0 design right now). It requires a sense of security and history, represented with many lines and lots of text. Smaller text (11 or 10 pixel) represents professionalism, and therefore further instills trust. A clean, simple color scheme to, again, reflect the bank’s professionalism. A simple, small logo near the top will do since a bank knows that its brand is big and does not need to be flaunted (because a larger logo would represent insecurity, passing an unwanted vibe to the visitor). Let’s look at some large bank websites:http://www.bankofamerica.com
http://www.citibank.com
http://www.wellsfargo.com
http://www.suntrust.com
http://www.wachovia.comSo you get the picture… essentially all these websites conform to most of the above description. They seem professional and knowledgable at first glance, which comes only from the design itself. Wachovia.com had the worst vibe of them to myself personally, and upon discovery, I pinpointed a couple things that cause it… One, the silver gradiented sidebar was a little too flashy, making it harder to concentrate on the text and form that lie on top… And Two, the lack of lines and separation (especially the content from background) make the text seem new and empty, something that doesn’t send messages of trust to the visitor.
Of course, we can find far worse than Wachovia, however. Let’s look at a smaller bank with much less of a design budget…
https://www.bankiowa.com/home/home
Even the URL structure doesn’t make too much sense (…home/home), but on to the design… There seems to be quite a few too many colors used, especially colors with too high of saturation which typically send a vibe of youth (bold reds, blues, yellows, etc.). I like this example because the functionality of the website appears to be very good. It’s well organized, easy to read, etc. But the colors and overall design of the website don’t really produce a feeling of trustworthiness, or even community (if that’s what was intended). There’s very little text, which makes the bank seem new, and the spacing attributes to that as well. Let’s look at another example…
http://www.thebankks.com/index.html
I almost believed this was an agricultural site instead of a bank. Of course, they’re targeting their market which may be primarily agriculture, but that doesn’t mean they can’t do both effectively. The graphics, font changes, and especially the farming pictures send more of feeling of informative instead of trustworthy. Of course it’s possible to give off a vibe of trust while still maintaining a fix towards agriculture for your market…
https://www.farmbureaubank.com/
A good sense of trust when visiting the site. And if they wanted to learn a little more towards agriculture on the design, they could use some farming pictures in their slideshow, simple, yet effective. And finally…
http://www.farmbank.net/
Quite different from the typical banking website and I’m sure their priorities are in different places than most of the above banks. After all, why design to instill trust? So you can keep visitors confident that their money is safe (there by keeping your customers) and attracting new ones. My assumption is that this bank probably doesn’t have too much competition in their locations, and if they do, they would certainly begin losing potential customers that value online security.
- The next example is the last one since these comparisons are getting to be somewhat long. But were going to do something entirely different to step out of the box of what my be stereotyped as “good design.” Remember, a good design achieves its goals! We’re going to do a pool construction company now. Let’s say you and the wife decide on getting a built-in pool (you can move to Florida too, to play long if you need to).The pool construction company’s goals is to sell you a pool. Your goal is to find the right pool at the right price, that’s it, right? Kinda… you probably already have in your mind what the right price is, and that can’t be changed, but what can, is the right pool. The right pool to you is just a feeling. It’s a feeling from something you’ve read in a magazine, seen in a movie, or maybe even at your neighbors’. The point here is, is that you have an idea or a feeling of what you want, and you can describe it to the different construction companies, but it’s the company that can match that feeling with your price that will win the bid. So how do you as the construction company match that feeling?
Well first it would take some research and experience to understand what it is most people want in their pool and what feelings they have when they describe it. A pool to most people is a place where they can relax and forget about the stresses of everyday life. To others, it may be entertainment, something that’s exciting and fun! So we have two pretty different vibes, but it’s still possible to include both of these into a design. Vibes that the website wouldn’t want to portray are feelings of stress and discomfort or just plain boring. Since people understand that these companies don’t spend great deals of money on their website, they won’t be necessarily needing a very professional design, and in fact, too professional of a design might turn off some visitors because that company will look like the expensive company. On the other hand, some visitors will be looking for just that – a trustworthy and reliable company that they don’t mind paying a little extra for. This is where knowing your market and what customers you want comes very handy! For the purposes of this, we’ll leave out professionalism and just show a couple examples on the two positives of what we’re looking for: relaxation and fun.
http://www.signaturepools.com/
http://www.palacepools.com/
http://www.artesianpools.com/
http://www.allstatepools.com/
Now, although I may argue with having sounds play automatically on a website, there’s no doubt that these sites do a decent job of instilling relaxation and/or fun in the visitor from their designs. On the other hand, these ones don’t instill that feeling as well:
http://www.swanpools.com/
http://www.elitepoolbuilders.com/
http://www.abovegroundpoolprofessionals.com/
Keep in mind pictures are one of the greatest ways to instill a feeling in your visitor. Having an integrated slideshow of pictures can really help connect with that predefined feeling a visitor has. If you don’t have a slideshow, try to choose the most common of images that have the greatest impact of exactly what the visitor is looking for. The last website posted doesn’t have a very flattering picture of the above ground pool, but it at least shows what is offered so visitors know they are in the right spot. Unfortunately, some visitors require a bit more – they want to know that this is the pool company that will sell them they’re dream, not just their pool.
When looking into the design of a website, it’s critical that you think back to the overall goals of the website and work your way forward through the visitor and back to the design. This backwards process will ensure all the connections are in place for an effective design.
