Monday 30 June 2008

An Experiment



I know that nobody does it and I’m probably entirely wrong and have with full knowledge of my deeds broken every rule in the ‘Web Page Designers Handbook’, but ... it’s an experiment. I’ve added several ‘speech bubbles’ to my Home Page to inform the user quickly and at a glance of key information relating to the site. Let me know if you like it, or if you hate it !

Mail me here:

hatethebubbles@artenscience.co.uk

or

lovethebubbles@artenscience.co.uk


Ultimately it’s about the User Experience. Does it help them find what they are looking for quickly ? The argument could be that it shouldn’t be necessary if the site was better designed, and that’s a compelling argument - however I’m going to stick with it for a while and gauge feedback. Not just from computer literate users but from the everyday guy who doesn’t know and doesn’t particularly want to know about ‘web standards’ - how is it for them ?

Peace - Steve

"True happiness... arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self." - Joseph Addison

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Steve - for what it's worth, I hate it. The *vast* majority of web uses don't need it, and you're targeting a tech-savvy audience. The number of people who are looking for your product (or even know what all the words mean) but don't know how a website works must be zero. And those that *are* looking for your product will be at best distracted by it and at worst will bounce instantly away from your site.

Steve Cholerton said...

Thanks for your comment Richie. I'm not sure that the vast majority of people visiting my site will be 'tech savvy' though ... They probably would not need my services if they were :-)

It's interesting though because it makes me think that maybe my products are not explained very well if people will have to be tech savvy to understand them ... they are after all aimed at business people.

I am going to add 'Use Cases' to each product and also screenshots and now I'll review the descriptive text carefully as well.

Thanks for provoking the thoughts and taking the time to write :-) Feedback is *a good thing*

Anonymous said...

By "tech savvy" I only mean enough to understand what SMS is and why it might be useful to their business.

Another piece of unsolicited advice :-) Don't use the phrase "Use cases" to business people. It's a software developer's term, and they won't know what it means.

Steve Cholerton said...

Yep, I knew that one :-)

I've just had a couple of emails regarding the 'speech bubbles' ... you are not in a minority Richie ;-)