So, you want to be a rule breaker?
I’m currently working on two, very different, business-to-business websites, and have been knee deep in information architecture (IA) and web design for the last six weeks or so. Having come across the same questions time and time again… I thought I’d put pen to paper about rules you should never break online. For this, I am specifically talking about business main websites, not blogs, twitters, forums, etc.
I see myself as a free thinker. My natural reaction to someone telling me that I can’t do something or shouldn’t do something is to challenge it. So, I find myself in the unusual position of championing convention. When it comes to business websites, function must always take higher priority to form (sorry designer friends). The look and feel is a very close second, but it is second.
So, when warming a client up to IA, I tend to use an analogy of a website as a text book. A business website serves a purpose – people come to it looking for something specific and their time is precious. Your site needs to get them to that info as fast as possible (whilst sign-posting them to relevant other content along the way). Think, if your site was a textbook you’d add a contents page, an index or lay things out alphabetically. Can you imagine trying to find a word in the dictionary if someone had decided to order things according to… say, their favourite words first, or some other such subjective nonsense… it would drive me crazy! This is the effect you have on site visitors if you ignore web conventions – so, don’t do it if you want to facilitate that all-important search-to-sale journey.
Web conventions you should not ignore
- Logos go on the top left and typically link back the homepage, this is the equivilent of flicking back to your contents page in a book.
- Major navigation goes along the top and secondary navigation goes on the left – I didn’t make the rules, it is just what people expect to see, so why mess with it if it helps people find what they are looking for? For me, I think of major navigation as chapter headings and secondary navs as chapter contents.
- Legalese in the footer of every page – it has to be there, but it will never sell your stuff, so just put it at the bottom. For me, this is like the publisher’s page at the front of a book.
- Disabilities Discrimination Act (DDA) and best-practice – get decent advice on this, you don’t want to break the law or alienate potential customers.
- Don’t put text in as an image – Google (other search engines are available) can’t read them and it causes a DDA headache.
- Use system fonts – I know that they are a bit dull, but using anything else is totally impractical, you need to use a font that is installed on every computer so that you can be sure your text will be legible to all.
Hmmm… so, business websites should all look the same?
No way. Just because reference books all have contents pages and indexes, they certainly do not look the same. Hard back, soft back, image style, tone of copy… just walk around a book shop, there is plenty of variety. Online, you add personality in the same way… but by employing a designer who specialises in web – print designers never get this quite right. The two sites I am working on at the moment could not look more different. Your brand can sing through, but you don’t need to mess with the stuff that makes your site actually work to make this happen.
And of course, there are always exceptions… particularly on very simple sites of fewer than 20 pages, where you can get away with being a bit more maverick.
For me, these are guiding principles. There are bound to be many more detailed tips from IA specialists… but if you start by putting function before form you’ll be better placed to move forward.
By Bryony Thomas | Chief Clear Thinker | Clear Thought Consulting Ltd | @bryonythomas | www.clear-thought.co.uk
Clear Thought Consulting works with small businesses, equipping them with the marketing strategies, suppliers, skills and set-up that they need to become bigger businesses. We do this by planning and delivering 12-month marketing transformation programmes – supporting a small business through a step-by-step process to making marketing pay. We firmly believe that when you can’t out-spend your competition, you have to out-think them.
Published on 11 February 2009
