I was catching up on my Bloglines feeds and came across some great advice from Seth Godin on building great web sites. I particularly liked this one, which mirrors how I feel about sites that use fancy Flash bits for no apparent reason other than they can do it and then hide the “skip intro” near the bottom of the screen:
“Many sites say ‘look at me.’ Your goal ought to be to say, ‘Here’s what you were looking for.’”
Number 8 is also inspiring, and applicable to many other fields (writing, garden design, home renovations…):
“If you hire a professional, hire a great one…10 mediocre website consultants working in perfect harmony can’t do the work of one rock star.”
One Comment
Most of the ‘flashy’ bits I see on websites seem to come from an old-school ‘interruptive’ marketing perspective.
We have to dazzle and wave shiny things in front of you to catch your attention… gotta get your attention… look at me look at me look at me!!!
Thing is – if I’m on your website then you already have my attention. I’ve given you permission to market to me, so stop trying to bedazzle me and just talk to me.