But for QVC

Why Richard, it profits a man nothing
to give his soul for the whole world.
But for Wales?
--Robert Bolt in "A Man For All Seasons"

[upon hearing about a non-profit client's new QVC alliance]

Macbeth! beware the conversions-per-clicksters

"The VC community continually salivates at ways of creating a craigslist... The days are gone when Craigslist was simply a hobby of founder Craig Newmark's... 1.7 million page views per day and nearly 7 million unique visitors per month."
--Tom Foremski, Silicon Valley Watcher.com

Recently I listened (as an observer) while an executive casually threw the statement "we will register 10,000 visitors" into a planning session, as if there was simply no chance it would not happen. Like many executives, who have not found time for the web, the idea that, if you spend bags of money on a site, "they" will come, is a universal misunderstanding of what drives web traffic.

"They recite from business self-help manuals and reduce the hard work of innovation and creativity to comic book parables."
--Matt Marshall and Michael Bazeley, MercuryNews.com

This basic mis[use]understanding of the web is widespread. Many believe they can build an eBay with smoke and mirrors alone, that users will never notice the vacuum, if they are dazzled by "interactive multimedia." After all the "end-user[buzz]" should bend to the "interactive[buzz]" "deliverables[buzz]" provided for their "at the end of the day[buzz]" enjoyment!

Then again, it might be prudent to understand what people are [actually] doing when they are on the web, before designing a web site. And frankly despite all the "research" being done by ad managers, and the like, many in decision making positions do not seem to have a clue. I worked closely with a CEO who confidently stated "I have never gone on the web, but I know what will work." I nearly slid off my chair!

There is a lot of "conversions per click through" snake oil being sold out there, and very little common sense. But it's common sense that builds a site like CraigsList. Common sense that says, don't be greedy, leave money on the table by refusing to monetize everything in sight. Don't pay too much attention to the conversions-per-clicksters. [More] Etc...

Which brings me to the point of my post...
Everyone should have a web-nerd like me around when wondering about why no one is using their dazzling new $150,000 Flash site (or why they should not build it that way -- in the first place). Perhaps I might shed some light on why a 14 year old kid out in cyberspace is getting 60,000 visitors a month to his www.Robot-Nanotechnology-Rules.com web site, running on a $10 a month account at PowWeb?

I get shushed, even kicked under the table, at meetings. Miniscule visitor numbers, on million dollar sites, is a very common, shushed, secret.

Plain speaking, out among them English

I was talking to my friend Rick Frankel about a web application, and mentioned possibly using Flash. You would have thought I had suggested writing HTML, where whole interface page was inclosed in <blink> .. </blink> tags. For those of you who never used Netscape Navigator the blink tag was perhaps the most annoying HMTL "feature" other than the pop-up window.

Rick was adamant about pointing out, that in he feels Flash does not pass the usability test. Web-based applications are ephemeral (Jacob Nielsen), and thus they must have a very low learning curve. Users may not get a chance to come back, time and again, to learn your web application's GUI. This is why the basic HTML form, with multiple choice questions, or simply text boxes, works so well. The application asks one sequential question after another, and the user is seldom confused.

Jakob Neilsen gives a Flash confusion example in one of his "Alertbox" posts: "On a page that asked for the square footage of the area to be covered, he was swearing as he tried to calculate his floor area by hand. Next to the form he was struggling with was a large animated graphic with flying words, including "room planner," "set up room size," "length," "width," and several other terms indicating that the box linked to an application for computing floor sizes. Too bad this user didn't see it. Nor did our other test users."

Rick also complains because a Flash GUI is not standard HTML and thus can create nasty usability glitches. Changing form layout and function, from a database, is also cumbersome, Flash does not play well with Rick's databases.

For me simple is usually better, so I listen to Rick, but there may be hope (see Nielsen's newest report, "Flash Usability: Design Guidelines for Web-Based Functionality, Tools, and Applications").

Rick's added eMail note: It's not just about usability, it's also about searchability and structure (Google "semantic web").

Anyway -- buy the book, see the movie...

www.useit.com (Jakob Nielsen)