Web site design - first impressions DO count, on and off the Web

Ramon Ray, Smallbiztechnology.com

4 Jan 2000

The first thing that someone notices about you when they first meet you is how you look. These first few seconds are critical, as how you look, often define how a person thinks about you - whether that opinion is right or wrong.

Imagine meeting your local telephone sales representative and her breath smells like rotten fish, her hair looks like a pound of Brillo Pads, her stockings have got more holes than Swiss Cheese and her blouse has got her morning's breakfast all over it.

It goes without saying that her presentation to you will be overshadowed by her appearance.

Your Web site is no different.

If it's not pleasing to the eye and easy to navigate - you'll end up losing customers to your competition - I don't care how many millions you spend on hundreds of fancy programmers.

Digression: Yeah, I know my own Web site, is not the best there is. But then again, I'm no Web designer....and when I get some money to hire a professional Web designer
End Digression

I talked with Scott A. Shuford, Vice President and Stefan Mumaw, President and Creative Director of Big Man Creative California based creative services firm, "...skilled in print & web design, photography & video production, and multimedia & CD-ROM projects and a one stop shop for small to mid size businesses!"

Big Man Creative

Scot and Stefan gave me the following answers about Web site design

1. What is good Web design? What is bad Web design? Any specific key words or things that come to mind?

Good design is anything that effectively communicates a message through visual means, and good web design would applies that theory to online communication.  There is no "standard" answer to what is good web design.   If a design communicates an idea or message effectively; if it brands the corporate image effectively; if it tells the story through layout, imagery, placement, and text; then it can be considered good design.  If it meets these requirements through the restrictions the web places on visual communication, then it can be considered good web design.

The easier question to answer is what is bad web design.   Bad web design is design that does not communicate the message OR does so without communicating to the appropriate audience.

2. How do you determine whether it’s best to use human faces (bodies) on your Web site or not? Inc Magazine for example does not , but NewYorkCargo.com (a Big Man Creative client) and OneCore.com does.

People generally buy people in that most people find it easy to connect with pictures of people. The obvious answer would be that it would benefit a company to use the human form in their design if they sell a human-oriented product or service, such as leather jackets, though there are times when that is not always the case. It is also a matter of budget or photo availability. It really depends on the focus and audience.  One thing the web tends to do is disassociate the user from actual human interaction, such as a buying from a person in a store or talking to a real person over the phone. If the focus of the company is a connection with the buyer on some sort of personal level, it might benefit the company to include human form within their design, to attempt to put human warmth to a traditionally cold medium.

 3. For small businesses using online template based (often free) Web site tools, how can they get their sites to have good Web site design - when for the most part (unless they know HTML) they are at the mercy of the template creator?

You actually answered your own question.  The site design has already been decided for you.  The template designer has laid the site out as he saw fit, and your information is plugged in to the template regardless of subject, image, or orientation.  You are given some power over layout, but on a general level.   What template driven sites lack is branding and personal attention to the audience, the company focus, and the message to be delivered.  The only way to ensure that the site effectively communicates the message is to have the site tailored to the audience, and that takes a personal design direction, one seldom found in template driven site design.

4. How important is Web site design, as compared to other Web aspects like - content, spelling, customer service, fast loading of the Web site content and etc?

Design dictates these things.  If a site design is poorly conceived, then the likelihood of the user ever getting to the content, spelling, customer service, etc. is in jeopardy.  The example I give is to imagine you are reading a magazine article, but the words are scattered around multiple pages, and the color of the text is dark brown, with black and dark green background images throughout the pages.  The user would never get to the message because the design of the page the article rested on was so poorly conceived, the message, however important or pertinent, was never received.

5. Where do graphic images as opposed to other visual elements (what are some other ones) fit in. Colors, fonts, sound.....?

Imagery separated from other graphical elements is really useless. You can have the greatest photograph, but if the photograph is poorly used or is combined with other graphical elements that don't communicate the message, then the effectiveness of the photograph is lost.  Design is the combination of ALL these elements, not just a decision about images.

6. Can you give some tips in using graphics - JPG vs GIF, size, tools too use for editing, how to obtain graphics/images, and etc?

The rules for jpegs vs. gifs is a simple rule with complex application.  Let's start with gifs.  Gifs are images where we get to tell the image how many colors to be.  The name of the game is file size.  Images carry weight in the form of bytes.  These bytes equal download time, as the more bytes the image needs to display, the larger the file size.  Gifs allow us to remove color from the image that we either aren't using or can live without.  By removing colors, we bring down the file size, therefore creating a smaller image that takes less time to download.  Generally, images that contain a great deal of flat color can be reduced without too much degradation of image quality, whereas if it was a human face with all of the color shifts that make up the curvature of the cheekbone etc., reducing the amount of colors would degrade the image too much to be acceptable.  That's where jpegs come in.  Jpegs use a different kind of compression to allow for smaller file sizes.   The more compression the image is saved with, the worse it will look, but the smaller the file size will be.  If you have images with a lot of gradation, like a human face or a photographic image, it's better to use jpegs.  If you have an image with flat color, like type, it's better to use gifs.

7.  Did the fact that NewYorkCargo.com has a lot of graphics consume a lot of the start up costs - getting the photos (did you take them or copy them from other online sources), taking pictures, and etc...what was the bulk of the cost?

Graphics can be a significant part of the start up costs if you are conducting a custom photo shoot to create images for the site. Often that is necessary to get the best possible images for use on the site, but in the case of New York Cargo we were able to work with images from their catalog materials and did not conduct a shoot. The bulk of the cost was in building and the administration and backend management for the large database of images and information.  The site is particularly image dense with any one product having up to 5 images associated with it. The functionality we built allows the client to completely update the majority of their site 24 hours per day, 7 days a week from any computer connected to the internet, AND without their need to have any knowledge of html at all.  The site is actually generated directly out of a database so that all information is as current as possible.

8. What are some very well designed Web sites you know of and some VERY crappy designed ones?

good:
http://www.juxtinteractive.com
http://www.freebord.com
http://www.rezn8.com
http://www.designproject.com

bad:
http://www.bldgtrends.com
http://www.rodcoservices.com/
http://www.uremet.com/
http://207.246.0.51/demiguel/

9. What kind of person makes a good Web designer - a florist, direct marketer, artist, cartoonist, etc?

There are principles that need to be understood in becoming a good designer.  Color theory, layout, navigation, interface design… all of these things need to be thought of during the design process. A good web designer is someone who is skilled in the principles of design and has experience with the peculiarities of the web. Anyone who can take the basic principles of design and apply them to online interface design would make a good designer.

10. How does Web design differ, if it does, from just any old person thinking "this looks pretty"? Meaning, are there SPECIAL considerations to consider for design ON THE WEB? (as opposed to painting one's house, putting together a print based magazine, etc)

The web does propose certain design challenges that other mediums don't have to adhere to.  The web has restrictions, rules if you may, on what is and isn't possible.  Our job as designers is to find out how to circumvent those rules to communicate the most effective way we can.  Unlike print mediums, there is no "final size" to a web site.  We don't know what the end user's monitor size, monitor resolution, or monitor color depth is set to, so the end user might be looking at our design on a 14" monitor (that translates to 640x480 pixels of available browser space), with their color depth set at 256 colors, or they might be looking at it on a 21" monitor (up to 1600x1200 pixels of available viewing space) at 16 million colors. This difference means that there is no way we can control or exactly predict what they are seeing.  We circumvent this by targeting an audience and working with the client’s knowledge as to what their target demographic is and design for that.  Younger people, teens, young adults, and young professionals will tend to have better systems and larger monitors as more of their lives are saturated with computing.  Seniors, lower income households, or other countries tend to have smaller monitors and slower systems.  If we are building a site for antiques, we would make sure the site looked good at 640x480 pixels and adhere to a web safe color palette based on that target market.  If we were building a ski and surf site, we can be more liberal with the size of the site and the color depth.

11. How does the audience the Web site is for affect how the site should be designed?

I think I answered this in previous questions, but it is the primary factor.  Without a target market, we can't effectively communicate the message.  There are too many variables to consider to state that "everyone is the audience".  "Everyone" is never the audience.  The client has to target an audience to communicate the message as effectively to the eyes and ears that most would be interested in the message. The design of the site, everything from imagery to color choices, along with the web's inherent limitations, need to be addressed and the target audience dictates that.

About Big Man Creative

Big Man Creative is a creative services firm. Our team is skilled in print & web design, photography & video production, and multimedia & CD-ROM projects. We are a one stop shop for small to mid size businesses!

We can create anything in the "print" realm from corporate identity design, to advertising and marketing collateral, to catalogs and packaging design.

At the same time we bring award winning web-based creative to the table including design in standard HTML or Flash, creation of forms and animations, programming services, customized ecommerce & back-end administration solutions and list management.

A partial list of Big Man Creative clients includes:

Christian Musician Magazine - international musician’s magazine
Davdon Artist Agency - Southern CA based artist representation
Del Taco - popular fast food chain in the South West
Jayson Hanson Fine Jewelry - exclusive platinum jewelry designer
New York Cargo - wholesale importer and retailer of leather jackets and accessories
Odermat & Vos – law partnership based in Seattle, WA.
The Orange Zone - Gen Y focused advertising firm, a division of Townsend & O'Leary
Orangewood Children’s Foundation - nonprofit services to kids in transition
Proctor Surfboards - custom surfboard designer Todd Proctor
Yarn Lady - specialty retailer on the net and in a traditional retail location

Brief Partner Bios:

Stefan Mumaw

Stefan Mumaw, Big Man Creative President and Creative Director, has received Macromedia's Shocked Site of the Day Award twice for his work. In addition to his duties here at Big Man Creative Inc., Stefan is also been a guest teacher at Chapman University and is publishing his first book, "72 Dpi: The Best of Online Interface Design".

Scott A. Shuford

Prior to forming Big Man Creative, Vice President, Scott A. Shuford was Operations Manager for an Internet music start up which was sold to Crosswalk.com Inc. and became their Music Channel, where he also served as a Producer. His experience is based in Internet and entertainment related sales and marketing having worked with Crosswalk.com, Jam Productions, The Gospel Music Association’s Dove Awards, Malaco & Savoy Records, Grapetree Records, and more.

Visit our site at http://www.bigmancreative.com to discuss your needs or review our online portfolio.