Articles: The Troubled Bruin

This is an online column done for this site.

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By Skip Ploss

As a Web designer for the last nine years I have been blessed with the opportunity to watch an industry and technology grow from hip tech to appliancetude. Yes I made that up. Appliancetude is the state in a technology's lifespan when the public's perception of it makes the leap from mysterious and slightly dangerous to being a toaster.

That's right, a toaster, or stove or washing machine or telephone or newspaper. Something you just use without thinking about how or why. If you want toast, you stick a piece of bread in the slot and push the button down. You don't give any thought to how it works, how the electricity goes in and heats up the wire elements crisscrossing the insulating board on both side of your Freihofer's 12 grain, you just use it. That's what the web has become as well, for the most part.

I talk to a lot of people about web design. To many, if you ask my wife. When the person I am talking to is a small business owner the question that inevitably comes up first is, "do I need Flash on my home page?" The second most popular question I get is, "don't I need more stuff to fill up my home page?"

I know from whence these questions come. We are a media generation. Not satisfied with listening to the news being read to us on Fox now we need to read other news in a small band scrolling across the bottom of the screen at the same time while another icon rotates the Fox News Logo in the corner, as the stocks and weather are shown somewhere else on the screen. People, your kid's, your friends, your uncle, will all tell you that your website needs to be "cool". This is usually followed by a quick trip around the internet where the "guide" shows you all of the "cool" sites they have come across. These usually involve animations, music, buttons that go "bing" etc. That's fine. The fact of the matter is that for small and medium businesses the primary mission of a website is, to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, "To place before mankind the website owner's goods and services in a format so clear and concise as to command their purchase/use."

A cartoon of Skip and his "smart toaster".Lets go back to the toaster for a sec. When you approach the toaster you have one task in mind, to make toast. If you live in a household like mine this may be "to make toast fast". This time however you have the new "cool" toaster with the touch screen display on the front. You place your two slices of Arnold Toasting Bread into the slots and go to press the "Toast" button. As your finger approaches the screen the toaster starts a movie about the history of the toaster company with sound. There is a speech by the company's founder made in 1923 before the National Convention of the ATMA (American Toaster Manufacturing Association). The movie is breathtaking and you find yourself wondering if they had Ken Burns make the film for your toaster. Wait a minute, all you wanted to make toast. You give up and grab a Yoplait out of the fridge and head for the door while your toaster plays Ashokan Farewell (from Ken Burns "The Civil War" mini series on PBS) in the background.

It's the same with your website. Think of it as an information appliance. The user has come to your web address for a specific reason; one your designer helped you to clarify. In most cases that mission is to give the viewer enough information to simply show the them that you exist and what it is that you offer. This is particularly true of small business. More and more the public uses the small business website as an enhanced yellow pages advertisement. As a way of answering the question "Can I get [insert your product or service] here in town?" If they have to sit through an interactive presentation first they may leave. You need a site that makes the path to your information, whether it be the hours and location of your store or the services your consultancy offers, clear and quick.

Remember, all you wanted was toast.

Is there a place for "interactives"? Absolutely. We'll discuss that in a later note.