Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design

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Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox writes about top ten mistakes in web design. He's been doing it for ten years.

When you're in a business that serves people, and the "top ten mistakes" are all about technical features, you must wonder if you're making an even bigger mistake in how you think about making sites.

The color of visited links? PDF files for online reading?? These are honestly the top ten mistakes of web design? I certainly don't know what the top ten errors really are, but I've rewritten some of the Alertbox ones to give you an idea:

• Have Simple pages. De-clutter is good for brains. Web design - including questions about ads, text size, and conventions -- are all about rocketing a page into the user's brain in a pleasant, instantaneous fashion. It's about how the site interacts with normal, human brains.
  
• Have a Simple message. As Ogilvy says, Advertising should be written in sentences of no more than twelve words. What does your site do? We remember short messages. Long messages are usually lost or mangled.
  
• Don't have Random Features. Do you need a search box on your site? Does it return good results? Does searching help the customer or frustrate the customer? Don't have a search box if it's not actually helpful - even if it's supplied by Google and hence requires almost no effort.
  
• Don't have Random Navigation. This clutters your site and your message. I think MySpace is fun, but I can't find anything on it, despite a profusion of navigation menus.
  
• Don't have Broken Features. Do less, better. The original Google philosophy, and possibly still the current one. When you expand, you must know what is key. Address book import does not work for me on MySpace. For MySpace, that is a pretty key feature. If it worked for me, I might have three times as many friends - multiply that by a few million people and you have the cost of that feature not working right.
  

That said, I found the list useful for a couple of reminders, like changing the color of visited links. I have been debating pop-up windows for a while. Personally, sometimes I hate pop-up windows, and sometimes I prefer them. I think most people hate them most of the time, but I have seen them successful on some sites and see them serving a function on Linkspank. The jury will decide. The main reason I think that pop-ups may go is that people have tried it and received negative feedback, so it's scarce on popular sites. Forgetting the jury itself is one of the top ten mistakes on the web. :-)

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Merry Spankmas

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The Spankmas Elves are still working on the New Linkspank, featuring the Secret Weapon Under Development. Hopefully it will be done by the 12th day of Christmas, which is January 6th.

In the meantime, you can always check out Santa Links on Linkspank, such as this picture.



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Chicago Beta

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This week I checked out Chicago Beta, a networking group which had its third meetup on December 12th.

It was pretty cool. I went around and described the Linkspank concept as "MySpace meets Digg," and made some vague allusions to the Secret Weapon Under Development.

There were web developers there and it was cool to meet people who were ready, willing & able to get involved with a startup, unlike all those business school students who TALK about their PASSION for startups and then go work for non-startups. :-)

Rags showed up and we chatted a while with some interesting folks, including Eric from Feedburner. I've always been interested in Feedburner, the supreme king of RSS feeds. One topic of our discussion is how small a percentage of the population knows what feeds are, how it's a pain in the ass to add them to readers and pages mostly, how IE7 may speed adoption.

The event could have used more people and more logistics but it's totally cool that such a thing is going on. Next month is another bigger event, TechCocktail -- note URL on that link :-) -- and Linkspank will potentially demo there and unleash the Secret Weapon Under Development.

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So 1996 (The Truth Can Hurt)

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I think from now on a litmus test for titling our blog posts should be, "Does this sound like a good song title?"

But I digress, without even having yet begun. Referring to the layout, Linkspank advisor Rags made the comment the other day that Linkspank was "1996."

Ouch. Painful because it's true!

The next prototype of the site, which will also contain the Secret Weapon Under Development, will hopefully be more like 1998.

How will this two year spring into the less remote past happen? A couple strategies:
1. finally caving in and doing rounded boxes like all the other "web 2.0"
2. orange
3. not having so squinchy a site.

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The Quest for Simplicity

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Every company should be able to summarize what it does and what makes it different in one sentence, regardless of whether it chooses to share this statement with customers or competitors.

Linkspank is still in the 2-3 sentence range. A strategy of 2-3 sentences is the same as one of 100 sentences, which is the same as one of 0 sentences: worthless. So I'm working on getting us to the one sentence.

The interesting thing is that we are a one-sentence business. Where did we go wrong? Our prototype website, as an attempt to start "simple", left out what I'm starting to think is the central idea to the site, and our best shot at getting to one sentence that makes sense.

So soon I hope to add in that new central piece, make the technology of the site slightly more complicated, and the idea a little simpler.

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Economist digs Digg

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In the Nov 30 issue The Economist highlighted Digg as part of its Technology Quarterly. They do a good job of summarizing Digg:

Digg.com, the most famous example of the genre, allows users to submit
interesting new items from around the web, relating to politics, technology,
celebrity trivia or anything else. Other users say whether they find the
stories interesting by "Digging", or clicking on them. The most frequently
"Dugg" stories appear on the front page.

Then they go on to talk about how "social news" on the rise.

Some observations:

1. This is the space Linkspank is moving into. It's about using people, not traditional search, to find things.
   
2. Note that neither Digg nor any of the other sites out there currently are social networking sites. Rather than social networking, they use the "wisdom of crowds" to pick winning articles.
   

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Test Results

We got a couple hundred users to the site, and the server did not explode.

Some good news:

• We got some users who visit the site and do a bit of clicking around
  
• It is easy to bring traffic to the site using ads
  
• Some people created accounts, rated stuff, etc.
  

Where we can improve:

• People (still) had trouble understanding what the site was for
  
• User Interface (still) needs work
  

This method didn't test the social networking part, since it's a direct-response model. In other words, it's no surprise that people didn't sign up much, just as people generally avoid logging in to YouTube when they go there.

So, in retrospect, this test only looked at how people react when they stumble across the site or are looking for a specific kind of link. And this will not be key to how we try to get people (which is through referral). Once we brush up the user interface we'll have to test that aspect more directly.

Running Some Ads

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Now that the prototype is there we need some feedback. We decided to do this through web advertising, for two reasons. First, we can use web searches and geographical targeting (big campuses) to target the people who supposedly will enjoy this site. Second, we can use our daily ad budget to control how much traffic we get, so it's easier to keep the test modest -- think dozens, not thousands :-).

Our ads are based on search terms that are relatively recent and relatively niche trends, like lonelygirl15. This is good because these ads are less competitive and they are cheaper. Also, one thing that is great about Linkspank is that you can search on it for recent terms and sometimes the results are phenomenal.

So from here it is a numbers game to get a couple of people to the site, and then we can get some feedback on what sucks and what doesn't.

Colors and Site Design

After an era of password-protection we are quietly reopening the site for testing with some friends.

New features include the ability to import your address book, to stay logged in between browser sessions, and to share an entire search page on Linkspank. Hopefully there are fewer bugs now as well.

One of the most drastic changes is the design. When we started playing around with site design during the summer, we wanted to create a site that looked unlike any of the blockbusters of today.

But through testing with consumers we were led back to a white background and a modest layout. The previous design was interesting but too tough to understand, and not browser- and resolution- friendly enough. Functionality is the key.

If we can make a site that does any ONE thing ok, we have done something... a worthy challenge.

Happy Spanksgiving!

Since I can't move, due to backyard football soreness and residual tryptophan overdose, it's time to surf on Linkspank and post on the blog.

Thanksgiving captures the essence of Linkspank: having a great time doing nothing, partly alone and partly in the company of other swell people. For that reason, it's the super-official holiday of Linkspank.com and it will now be known as Spanksgiving.

In the spirit of the holiday, here are some links found on Linkspank by searching for "thanksgiving":

The First Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Pants

Thanksgiving Day Parade with Adult Swim Characters

[Spiffy] Give thanks for JetBlue: Airline to give out free beer on Thanksgiving flights

Eating the Thanksgiving Turkey

Unpitchable

Last spring a team and I pitched a proto-Linkspank three times in a business plan competition at Chicago GSB. We pitched once with a written business plan, and twice in a class setting with VCs and entrepreneurs. Since then I have pitched two other social networking ideas in classes and competitions.

What has a little startup learned about VCs from these experiences?

VCs prefer to invest in a business that they can defend like a geometric proof - i.e., with no room for argument. They have little choice - they are in a betting game and need to minimize failure. But lots of businesses can (or could) succeed despite the fact that they aren't "geometric proofs." These businesses will usually be overlooked by VCs. (Much of the time, VCs imply that the business is messed up or not a mature idea, while in reality they won't invest just because of the type of business it is.)

The ideas that I like - Internet sites that connect people - tend to fall into this category: unpitchable. Since network effects are in play (customers breeding customers), any error that you make in predicting customers is magnified.

Because of the type of business, you essentially are getting up there and saying, "either we'll be big or nothing." You can have the best financial analyses and forecasts of the day but because of your type of business, you will be accused of playing with numbers. Worse, you may be accused of being arrogant and delusional enough to think you can be the next MySpace, even if you recognize that it's big or nothing.

The problem isn't because of the Internet bubble (the first one or the current one), or because the Internet is "new" or extra "fad"-like or because the people who use these sites are trendy. The problem is when your model involves building a network - like a social networking site, although there are and could be other kinds. As I mentioned, this kind of business is especially difficult to predict, since it will be either big or nothing and the difference between those outcomes can hang on small factors (a bit like chaos theory).

So, these businesses are tough to predict in EXACTLY the respect that VCs are trying to minimize at all costs.

We are the anti-VC company!

Unpitchable.

Screen Resolution Woes

After a few months of prototyping the site, including the design, this week we looked at how it appears on different screen resolutions.

We did this by using the Firefox extension "Window Resizer", which resizes your browser to the major screen sizes in use.

I was a bit sad to find just how small are the resolutions most people still use. Still a quarter of the world uses 800 x 600. When I resized my browser there, I was sort of stunned. You can't fit ANYTHING on that page.

As it is, the current design doesn't even quite fit on a 1024 x 768 screen, which is the most popular resolution.

Unless we ignore the 800 x 600 users, which I don't think we'll do, they are really bringing everyone else down because you have such a smaller canvas to work with. People have to design for the lowest common denominator, which means a lot of unused space for people with the biggest screens, who might be our power users.

One option is to create multiple versions for different resolutions, and maybe even pick the right one for a user automatically using Javascript. But that seems like a solution that is prone to break and to confuse and potentially to annoy users.

So: woe is me!

On the flip side, it reminds me of something my poetry writing professor (Henri Cole) told us in college: constraints were an opportunity to shine. He made us write poems that included a predetermined set of words that didn't really go well together. Maybe, by operating under the constraints of 800 x 600, we can achieve a perfect haiku!

(if there's room to fit it on the page)

Breakin' the Law Part 1: Branding

Breakin' the Law Part 1 is about not listening to Linkspank's potential customers, which I have felt obligated to do in some cases.

Case in point: a majority of the people I've asked don't like the name Linkspank, and a decent percentage downright hate it.

We just feel that this is the right name for the right people, and that if the site goes anywhere it will be an interesting and universally acceptible brand name. Plus we don't want a bland name that will please everyone. We can't be everything to everyone. So bring on the spank.

Concept Testing and Advertising -- Reversed!

We're looking at mixing tactics for concept testing and promotion. Usually, people think of talking to opinion leaders as a way of testing an idea. And, they think of advertising as a way of promoting. But we're looking at using each of these tactics for the other purpose.

Contextual ads: a good way to concept test because you can control the volume that goes to your site (via your daily ad clickthrough budget). The people who visit your site are not unusually influential, so it's good for a preliminary test.

Opinion leaders: a good way to promote your site. An opinion leader can be great for improving an idea. The problem is that if an opinion leader gets excited, they are interested in pulsing it to their network, which could cause a flood of traffic to your site. You obviously want this to happen...but only once you're ready for it.

So if you're a power Digger, pretend you never read this post...for now. :-)

The Most Unofficial Official Blog Ever

This is the official blog of Linkspank.com. Linkspank is intended to be the ultimate procrastination machine. I am developing it and will try to launch it sometime this century.

I've been working on Linkspank for over a year, ever since I started developing a totally different idea. Over that period of time I have worked on different ideas, worked with a variety of people, participated in a business plan competition at Chicago GSB, and all kinds of stuff. This would be a very long post if I had to cover that all today. So I'm starting in medias res just like a great epic. Or whatever.

Rags, trusted advisor and current classmate at business school, made the great suggestion that I should blog what I am doing. Rags has a real blog at http://poweryogi.blogspot.com/.