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[bwelford]

In another thread today, there was that frequent discussion about the way to get a traditional website designer to incorporate SEO principles. It struck me that it is all part of the same problem. We are all different and unique. You can be 100% sure that someone else sees things differently from the way you do. Peter Drucker got me thinking about this a long time ago and I wrote up some reflections in an article titled "Six Important Words".

Basically it's best to assume that everyone may see things differently from you. If you're designing a website, the long process develops a certain personal perspective of the website. If you work in a company, your working life means that you develop a particular perspective of what the company is all about. A potential customer may have a very different view of the website or the company.

So my view is that whatever you are working on, you should seek the views of someone else. The more that person is independent and willing to tell it like it is the better. In Usability testing, there is a big debate on what are the right number of people to have in your test group. 5 seems to be the minimum that gets any votes. However I believe that the very first person who checks out the website may give you say 2/3 of what you get from the group of 5. The fact that the person is someone else is what really counts.

We all have different cultural backgrounds, life experiences, etc. so expect us all to have different reactions. The big one may well be men versus women in terms of website design, as a recent meeting in the UK suggested.

Barry Welford

[mcanerin]

I remember being at a marketing meeting at McDonalds Head Office along with Coke and Disney Reps, discussing marketing strategies for the quarter. (I mostly sat quiet and looked around in awe - those guys are good!)

I remember the the VP of marketing mentioned that they were changing McDonalds catch phrase from "You deserve a break today" to "We love to see you smile".

When asked why (after all it was extremely expensive to change that much branding) He said because women were an important part of their customer base and they had new research that showed that catch phrases that tell you to do something rated lower with women than catch phrases that incorporated empathy and feelings. They also showed that men didn't much care either way, but usually chose to "tell" when designing an ad instead of "asking".

An example he used was that often women will resent being told to "have a good day", and respond much better to "did you find everything" or "how was your day".

Interesting - I wonder what effect that would have on copywriting for websites?

Opening for discussion....

Barry, I agree 100% about getting outside feedback. It's so important I can't begin to describe it! Just do it You wouldn't believe how many times my so-called "ready to go live" site needed important changes that I would have totally missed unless I had asked someone else. And I usually ask someone as different from me as practical.

Ian