What it takes to make a good website
What it takes to make a good website
When you want to make a good website a good process might be even more important than a good design.
A little while ago I wrote an essay that started with the question of what a good website is. It turned out to be a philosophical journey into finding the truth, the role of beauty and forging a connection to the medium. Recently a client confronted me with another question that gives the thoughts about what a good website is another dimension. He asked what a state of the art website is. This is more down to earth, more practical. It’s a great question and it leads to another, sometimes neglected, question of what it takes to make a state of the art website.
Mobile determines the state of the art of web design
I think the most powerful power by far today in web design is mobile. It brings us simplicity, to-the-point-ness, clarity, goal-oriented-ness, user-centered-ness. These things have always been important to good communication, but before mobile, the temptation to cram too much information onto desktop websites with small fonts beat simplicity every time. It was really hard to sell to-the-point-ness to clients. And when you did they stuffed the website with useless information anyway after the first release. But then mobile came and changed the game. Now a company has to convince the user in a few seconds on a tiny phone screen. Enter the
No screens but responsive systems
Design becomes more complicated. A responsive website is harder to design. You’re not designing a screen anymore but a system. It’s a different way of thinking, responsive thinking. For each element on the page, you have to think how it behaves and looks on different screens. You have to think big and small at the same time. The relationships between the elements become more important. The way the elements move around on the screen on resizing becomes a content choreography. Simplicity can help here as well. The more simplicity in the concept, the easier it is to design and use the system. So there are different forces at play that make simplicity state of the art.
Content first and content last
But it all starts and ends with the content. At first, it may seem easier because simplicity requires less content, but simple content is harder to make. It has to be of higher quality. It has to be cooked down to the essence. The most extreme example is microcopy. Headers, texts on buttons, menu items have to be spot on. Each word counts. Every single word has to be both user-centered and tell the story the company want’s to tell. Of course, find-ability in search engines also leans heavy on written content, so SEO also comes into play here. But the higher demands on content goes for all content. Photography, for instance, has to support the story and has to be well crafted for the purpose.
Appification and web technology
Mobile also brought us apps. We’ve always had programs on our computers, but apps are different. App is short for application and each program is an application. But just like the word app is smaller than application, a mobile app is smaller than a traditional desktop program. It is usually focussed on one task and must do this extremely well to survive the competition from the thousands of others out there. Mobile apps raised the bar for all applications. Thinking of a website as part of the service a company offers, service design thinking, results in websites with more functionality. We demand that the websites we use function as well as the best apps we have on our phone. Applications on websites have to match the to-the-point-ness, simplicity, usability and animated user interface we have gotten used to on our mobile apps. We could call this the appification of websites. It raises the bar for user interface design, back-end functionality, and overall site performance. So state of the art also put high demands on development. But most of all on the integration of all this.
The process is the key
More and more I’ve come to realize that it doesn’t (just) take a good strategy, concept, and design to make a good website, but more importantly, it takes a good process. The projects that don’t turn out so well point this out most clearly. When the translation between design, technology, and content is not coherent, the concept starts falling apart. When everything goes well, the concept is a creative force. But when the circumstances of the project create disharmony between the different parts, the concept can start to work against the project. A half-baked execution of an ambitious concept is far worse than a well-executed modest concept. You have to constantly sell, defend and curate the concept. The concept has to be part of every discussion. It is the guide for decisions and decisions can improve the concept and make it stronger. It drives the project. So a good process is essential to a good website. Every team member, including the client, has to be on board. And there has to be constant interaction between the members on every topic. Developers have to be able to comment on design and designers on development. The same goes for the content production. Because this is one of the core principles of Agile Scrum this project management tool is so appealing. Next to the fact that it is a project management tool to control time and money, it is a way of working that frames the process of collaboration in a way that keeps the concept in the middle of the project. It can stimulate clear verbal identification of issues and the conversation about them. It splits up the concept into clear goal-oriented pieces. In a good process, the initial concept and design become better while working on it from different angles.
During the process, you gain new insights about the client and the project and you adjust the design to reflect this. When more people become involved during the process, the new viewpoints from different backgrounds and experiences can make the design stronger in the execution. A bad process, on the other hand, can ruin a perfectly good design. So in order to achieve a good end result, designers have to design processes and organizations as well.
Design the process
The goal of the experience designer is to design a great user experience. The process is essential to delivering a user experience that is useful to the user and good for the business of the client. Quality assurance in interactive projects takes strategic, conceptual, design and development skills. User experience designer is the only role that combines all these different qualities. So he/she is integral to the creative process and plays a pivotal role in strategy, conception, design, and development. Quality assurance takes both good analytical, design, development and process management abilities. This is not only true for your personal performance but extends to the internal team and the client. If there is no consensus with the client, tracking of the development progress and a constant eye on the quality of the user experience, you cannot create the ground-breaking, disruptive service design brand experiences you want.