I was watching one of my favorite shows this weekend, one of the survivor shows on discovery channel. The presenter highlighted something what he was told in military school – something called K.I.S.S. principle – Keep It Stupid Simple. It does exactly what it says. Keep everything simple and easy.
And then I realized this technique can be perfectly adopted by web designers and web developers. And it is one of the biggest mistakes web masters have to confess. How many times did you look for simple ‘log off’ button etc? Bare in mind that average page view is less then 30 seconds, what that means? That means web pages should be purpose-built with clear navigation. How important it is?
On one of the lectures about web development I’ve noted this example of two airlines. Back in time when online booking was coming to play leading airlines trusted internet marketing professionals with doing research and building their online booking system. The other airlines decided to give that task to students.
Well both teams stud up with their task, first ending up with major system, with all carefully planned structure. Second one doing its job, basic, clear and very much purpose build. Now important fact here is the price. I will not bring the names here, but overall cost of leading airlines professional project reached about 10 times more then cheap and simple students version.
Well everything looks ok up till now. No charm in having advanced online booking system if you have money to pay for it. But the judgment day arrived year or few years later, when this smaller airlines started to seriously compete with the leader. The results of research were quite a shocker. What customers of leading airlines found difficult is this very same polished online booking system. It was too complicated with functionality which customers didn’t found helpful. Resulting with moving to the other airlines website to book their tickets online. It is shining example how simplicity and purpose-build websites are important for your business.
So my advice is, on the end of your web development process, sit down on your home computers, open your new website and look on it as you will see it first time, as ordinary internet user. It is difficult to spot sometimes everything, especially if you saw this site thousand time, then maybe ask on of your friends, or even do simple research withing your customers how they finding usability of your new site.
Such obvious and simple fact. But wasn’t that quality of geniuses to find simplest and clearest solutions for the most complex tasks? The solution which seems was there all the time, on the front of out eyes.
It does require deep knowledge and understanding of particular subject and all its processes to came up with one simple solution, understandable and clear to everyone.
More about K.I.S.S. idea in web design can be found on great website use it dot com which. You can read more about it here.
thank you