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Recently I flipped open a marketing magazine and read a rather provocative ad by the Canadian advertising agency Huxley Quayle von Bismark. The ad claimed that they were embracing new technology and new thinking. That they wanted to "take people from being spectators of advertising to becoming participants." and "challenge each other daily to create the best work of their lives."

“Bravo!” I thought. Well, it was “bravo” until I went and checked out the website and blog.

Oh. My. God. I'm sure they are a great bunch of people and do excellent work, but it was another example of “site architorture.”

It started with the slightly nervy “Be patient…” notice as the 100% Flash site loaded and went quickly downward from there.

So I put aside my instinctive rant and thought, well, let’s be helpful. Let’s offer these folks some solid, constructive advice.

Let My People Scroll
The coolest thing about the Web is that it is fluid, dynamic and flexible. On any given site there will be pages with varying text. But through the magic of something called a scrollbar, we can adapt to any length of copy. But if a site is designed with a fixed height as many 100% Flash sites are, it means that when text falls below the fold, the only solutions are an annoying internal scrollbar or to chop up the text with a series of “Next” buttons. Both solutions are really unfriendly in terms of usability. To me it is a tip-off that a designer does not understand the way the Web is supposed to work, but is stuck in a controlled presentation mindset typical of print. Let people scroll to get information in a way that they are already familiar with.

Just Say No To Carpal Tunnel
You want to be engaging and move people from spectators to participants? Ensure that you keep the number of clicks that it takes to get to information to a minimum. Navigation should be intuitive. I shouldn’t have to click on a “Close panel” button to go back to a sub-menu.

No PDF Surprises
The news items opened up as PDFs, without any prior notice. If you aren’t going to allow people to read your press coverage online, please at least mention that it will be in the form of PDF downloads. And, go ahead, call me tediously pedantic but shouldn't this News section be called "Press" or "In the News"?

Consistency is a Good Thing
The blog didn’t match the look and feel of the rest of the site and started with the oldest entry first, which meant a scroll-o-rama fest to get to the current entry. (This has since been corrected.) Even within the blog there was a lack of consistency. This is how an advertising agency that claims to see "endless possibilities in this new 2.0 world" represents itself online with its About page:

Details, People, Details

It's the little things that build professionalism, brand and trust. Oversights like the ones above and these below eat away at credibility:

• On the "About Me" page, under "Contact" it read "Website:" and then an empty space. If you are going to type in "Website:" please include the URL beside it.
• It would be great to incorporate social bookmarking tools into the main blog, in addition to the RSS subscription.
• Throughout the blog posts many links were not hyperlinks. So, a visitor is greeted with a sentence like "Follow the link below" and is unable to click through to the suggested destination.

While the blog entries themselves were quite interesting, the three-line profile on the aforementioned "About Me" page included this sketchy bit of copywriting:

Using new thinking and embracing new media technologies, we use expensive and increasingly less effective traditional media less, while building the involvement in your brand more.

I’m glad they use expensive, less effective media “less.”

Am I being too mean? Maybe, but...

Here’s the thing: If you’ve got the chutzpah to place a highly visible ad about how you’re so 2.0 blah blah blah, then you should make sure you abide by some very simple user-centric design tips, have a nice consistent look and respect your users' time/experience by including contact details, clickable links and easy bookmarking tools. Don't claim to get it when you don't.

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two comments:

Hey Anne,

Read your comments on our site. Some good tips. I have to say I disagree on the scrolling critique, as items that are over a page in length are scrollable. Those that are not, are small enough not to need it. We don’t have any "next" buttons as you suggest. Just a "close panel" panel button, which you can avoid simply by using the constant navigation on the side. So you don’t have to close anything to go to another submenu. So I don’t see the "architorture" as you say, but a very simple, easy way to navigate to any part of the site from any other part of the site.

The pdfs load in a second or two, and are good quality, so I don’t really agree on that either. And I don’t leave the net to view them, but we’re going to look into that one. Maybe things are different on your computer, but mine opens everything right in the browser.

I get your comments on the blog. We don’t have anyone’s personal info on the About Me page. Maybe we should have mine, as I do most of the postings. Again though, we’ve had lots of traffic and lots of compliments on our content. And last I heard, content was what it’s all about.

Maybe we should say "increasingly ineffective traditional media less", but everyone who has contacted us seems to get the point. I’ll think about that and get back to you.

In the meantime, we’ve had several thousand people o our blog and website in just a few short weeks, and lots of friends on our Facebook page. We’re also involved in several pitches right now, both here in Canada and internationally, so I think we’re doing okay. But we can always be better.

Thanks for the advice. We’ll work hard on getting better.

Andy Shortt
HQvB

Andy Shortt () - 04.21.08

Charlotte () (URL) - 04.23.08