What your eye doctor can teach you about web design
One of the biggest problems with design, especially web design, is that we have a nearly impossible task of trying to use words to describe design. For example, if I say light blue, what color comes to mind?
Is it the light blue of an early morning sky? The light blue of a flower? The light blue from a popular corporate logo? All of these are contained in light blue, but none conveys the same light blue I’m probably thinking of.
It’s not that we’re unsure of how a design makes us feel. Quite the contrary, we know precisely and firmly how a design makes us feel. What’s imprecise are the words we use to describe it, and so we often end up with web site designs that leave us unfulfilled, like how you feel a half hour after a fast food meal. You know you ate, but it just doesn’t feel satisfying.
So how do you fix this?
Anyone who’s ever been fitted for any kind of corrective lenses – contacts, glasses, OMGlazerbeamsinureyes, etc. knows the process for assessing your vision. You sit in front of a fairly large pair of goggles and the opthamologist flips various lenses in front of your eyes as you look at the wall chart. Throughout the process he asks you which is better, 1 or 2, over and over again in rapid-fire sequence. (at least, my doctor only asked which was better, 1 or 2)
The eye doctor doesn’t ask you about the qualities of what you’re seeing – no questions about color reproduction or grain, sharpness or focus. He just asks which is better, 1 or 2, because very often a layman’s description would only muddy the waters. The speed at which he proceeds ensures that you don’t try to get verbal about what’s fundamentally a non-verbal issue.
The very binary question of which is better without any lengthy verbal judgements means that we don’t have to force words to describe what we’re seeing. We only need to pass judgement about general positivity or negativity. Yes, 1 is better. No, 2 is worse. The speed means we resort to trusting non-verbal, instinctive decisions, rather than laboring about how to describe something.
The next time you’re working on a web site, advertising creative, design or set of designs, try the eye doctor test. Print out the designs or stick them on Powerpoint slides, and show them to people rapidly. Which is better, 1 or 2? Don’t ask for anything that requires verbal analysis, just quick calls. Discourage discussion for this specific test (there will be plenty of time for deliberation later). Just cycle through your designs. Which is better, 1 or 2? For added sobering results, throw in designs from competitors and see how yours stack up in a rapid, first impression test.
You might be surprised at how easily people make good judgements in the blink of an eye.
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Marketing flowers
I’m amused by how often the term organic is used in marketing. Organic campaigns, organic link building, organic traffic growth. You’d think the eco/green movement moonlighted in marketing the way we overuse the word organic.
Here’s some food for thought – organic if you like. The difference between organic marketing and paid marketing is the difference between a real flower and a plastic one. If your goal is superficial (decorate the office quickly), plastic is as good as real, it’s faster, probably cheaper, and easier to manage and maintain.
If your goal, however, is for that flower to eventually grow, reproduce, and bear fruit, then the plastic version will not do. The trouble is, a real flower is a lot more work. It takes vastly more time, more energy, more maintenance than the plastic or cloth substitute, but if your goal is long term, lasting growth, only the naturally grown flower will do.
Is there a place for the plastic floral display? Of course – but it depends on your goals. Too much marketing focuses on the superficial, the fast hit, the quarterly or monthly numbers (which are vitally important, don’t get me wrong) at the expense of the long term growth. The investment you make in the plastic flower today will not diminish, but nor will it ever grow or bear fruit. The investment you make in the real flower will, assuming proper care and focus, not only grow, but increase until you hit a critical mass where your field of flowers are self-sustaining.
What are you growing in your marketing?
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What not to market
Ever wonder what’s really hot, what’s really selling, where you can make some significant profits? Here’s a screenshot of the Auction House from World of Warcraft.
Look at all the gold and shiny things you could sell. What should you sell? Where should you focus your attention?
If you followed the herd mentality, you’d put your resources into Runecloth. You’d spend every waking moment gathering Runecloth in the game, because that’s what everyone else is selling. 4,683 people are selling Runecloth – it’s wildly popular! Jump on now – everyone’s doing it.
If you don’t follow the herd mentality, you’d notice the item beneath it is Runecloth Belt, which is currently being sold by… no one. Not a soul is selling them. It’s not popular. It’s not hot.
It’s not being competed for. That means you can sell in that niche at whatever price you want to sell at. You have no competition. (caveat: it’s still a desired item – just one that isn’t being produced)
This is counter-cyclical thinking or blue ocean strategy – sell where the competition isn’t, and even a modest amount of product demand plus no competition will ensure profitability.
Contrast that with the commodity market where low price is everything and even the slightest sea change in the marketplace will throw you from profitability to loss in the blink of an eye.
Want to know what markets you probably shouldn’t be in? Real life doesn’t have an Auction House that details every last item available and its current profitability, but real life does have a spam box.
Spammers are the bottom of the barrel for any commodity, hoping to eke out the tiniest profit on sheer volume. One look at what’s “hot” in spam should tell you whether your industry is in trouble or not, whether you’re swimming in a flooded market. If you find your industry consistently in your spam trap, you need to give some consideration to alternate product lines and sources of revenue, because the spammers are crowding out all of your legitimate marketing efforts and probably undercutting you on price as well.
What and where should you be marketing? Wherever the competition isn’t.
Food for thought, by the way: when “everyone is joining Twitter” or “everyone is on Facebook”, everyone is doing the social media equivalent of piling into the Runecloth market. For leverage in the world of social media, are you looking for the Runecloth Belt market or hoping the herd is right?
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A thoughtful Memorial Day
There is sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition and of unspeakable love.
- Washington Irving
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
- Kahlil Gibran
May your Memorial Day be a thoughtful one.
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The Questions of PodCamp Boston 4
I’m very excited to see how fast PodCamp Boston 4 is growing, particularly under new leadership as Michelle Wolverton takes PodCamp Boston in new directions this year as lead organizer. One of the most interesting aspects of PCB4 is the refocus on shared community knowledge through Questions.
How many times have you been to a conference and seen the same session descriptions over and over again, fully laden with jargon and as generic as toothpaste? “Industry leading best practices session given by noted thought leader…” Will the session even be what you want it to be about? You don’t know, and you roll the dice and hope the session isn’t going to bore you to tears or be one long product pitch.
PodCamp Questions are a different take on the conference. We all have piles of video of top speakers doing their talking head thing. You can, as Mitch Joel pointed out, attend the best conference in the world from your desk. Why would you spend the time and money to travel across town, across country, across the world to have the same experience, or even a lesser experience, since TED Talks are probably the best video sessions available to you?
You wouldn’t. I wouldn’t.
What you would do, what I would do as an explorer, as a person on a mission to get my questions answered, is trek all over the place to get real answers to my questions.
That’s why PodCamp Boston 4 is asking people to sign up not as speakers, not as presenters, but as Questioners to lead a Question discussion. What burning question do you have about new media, podcasting, blogging, social media, etc. that you just don’t have the answer to?
Think about that for a second. The “speaker” doesn’t know the answers to their “session”? Yes. That’s the whole point. It’s reversing the speaker/audience model completely, because for every person with the courage to ask a question, there are a dozen people with the exact same question that aren’t as eager to give voice to it and another dozen who never thought to ask the question but deeply want to hear the answer now that they’ve heard the question. Instead, you’ll ask the question and be in a room with dozens of like minded people, putting together the answer you could never get from a talking head speech. Chris Brogan started this at PodCamp Toronto 2007, leading a session called, “Somebody Teach Me Final Cut Pro”.
Think about how much easier it will be to decide where you want to spend your time at PodCamp Boston 4. Rather than wade through senseless, jargon laden session descriptions, you’ll just take a look at the questions and decide which ones you want the answers to as well.
- What’s next in social media?
- How do I get more viewers for my podcast?
- What’s the ROI of Facebook?
- How do I write an application against Twitter’s Social Graph API?
If you’re not registered for PodCamp Boston 4, you’re going to miss out on some great questions and answers – including yours.
Register today to attend PodCamp Boston 4, then sign up to ask a question and lead a discussion to the answers you want.
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