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A Vote to Keep It Simple: Don't Make Them Wait to See the Show
This isn't an uncommon experience on the Web. The arrogance is amazing. Can you imagine telling your audience (who pay for their online time) that they should waste 10 minutes just to see what the pictures looked like? We need to begin by fitting the message to the medium of the Web, not forcing our ideas down a narrow pipe which can't handle the flow.
The Web is built on actions taken by the audience; by forcing them into a wait and see viewing mode, the likely action will be hitting the Stop button so the frustration ends. And the viewer surfs to a site that understands and addresses this design problem.
Multimedia pros often fail to address the perception of the audience when creating Web sites. Looking at the Web through the limitations of the audience -- such as low-end PC equipment, slow modems, and unreliable traffic flow on the Web -- would lead to a design that matched the graphics to the optimal download time. Much more is going on than simply viewing what is on the Web page. How many of you would wait five minutes to see a show or commercial while it was loading? The Web is a short attention span theatre slowed to a focus by a good site, one loaded with rich content and graphics intelligently fit within the narrow bandwidth we live in today.
While a picture can tell a thousand stories, on the Web it may take a thousand seconds to view many pictures. But only 10 seconds to begin reading the story. This reality is steadfastly denied by many in the multimedia industry on the Web, who want to be cutting edge. They ignore the fact that every graphic file is a separate file, not pasted onto the page or imported into Director. Graphics are separate files which must be loaded, one at a time. That's the reality. Trying to live in the ever predicted "not too distant future" is a joke. All we have is the present. Good writing is the key to a good Web site now.
I know, I know, here comes the other piece of the snake oil: nobody reads anymore, the most accepted misconception I hear. It's a broadcasting approach, where the audience is assumed to be comatose and drooling. All we can do is show them a few visuals, that's all they can handle. So why is HotWired doing so well? If any site would assume to be graphically dependent, it would be this one. But their design does an excellent job of dealing with the reality of the Web, providing good writing and interactions instead of overwhelming visuals. They fit their vision to the Web.
The audience on the Web has to be interactive and according to a recent GVU survey, many are searching for information and/or researching. They are highly educated as well. They can and do enjoy reading along with the visuals. If you won't tone down your graphic content, can you at least give some writing to back it up? Waiting for a graphic to load and finding that there is nothing there but the picture is disappointing.
Think of it like designing a cross-platform multimedia piece. You take into account the differing audio formats, color palettes, programming tricks, and try to deliver a package that works. Why not take the same approach to the Web by understanding that the real limitation are the slow modems, hookups, and technical knowledge of your audience? We have to work within limitations, not live in denial of them.
Check out the most successful sites on the Web. Not ones who advertise lots of hits, but ones who are making money. Time and time again they are simple, elegant sites directed to a target audience. And their graphics are small, because it's not the pictures, it's the information!
As much as we all would like this problem to be eliminated -- so we can exhibit a high level of graphic skills -- the real skill is in fitting the message to the medium. Check out my cyte for one view of this if you like, or give us some feedback by emailing the author: Michael Declan Dunn (iics@writething.com)
Peace. MDD