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Feedback on the "building a good web site presence&quot

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Kay

Free Member
Feb 8, 2005
412
33
UK/SE Asia
The sticky topic is locked so I hope I'm posting this feedback in the right place.

What about looking at how the uptake of broadband in the UK might affect how e-commerce websites are designed?

When most people were on dial-up connections speed of loading was crucial, but now with so many people having broadband perhaps it's less important. Maybe broadband will lead to things being done differently. Any thoughts?
 
Yeah, five years ago we tried to keep everything below 10kb if possible, or 15kb at most. Now we don't worry about it so much. (We don't have any e-commerce sites anyway, just content sites and online brochures not necessarily for a UK audience).

If you're just aiming for the UK market then maybe loading speed is even less important to you.

Maybe the insane reason some people don't have broadband is because it isn't readily available to them - but I think they're very much in the minority now in the UK. Haven't checked the latest figures.
Virgin made it reasonably easy for us to get broadband because they don't have a minimum contract period.
 
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We believe best practice is still to design for the dial up connection then your sites load super quick on broadband and you keep dial up customers happy.
 
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So your site is designed for any customer rather than for the right customer?

Don't get me wrong - I'm just trying to stimulate debate. :)

I'd got the idea that sites would change because most people in the UK now have broadband. From what you say, Jason, it hasn't yet happened. Do you think it will happen or not?
 
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Isn't every customer the 'right' customer? I like reasonably light websites... anything that makes my harddrive scratch away for more than a few seconds gets turned off sharpish. I'm on BB, but an optimized site that isn't graphics heavy or full of Java / Javascript / Flash is always preferrable.
 
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Get it even faster -

drop:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-gb">
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 5.0">
<meta name="ProgId" content="FrontPage.Editor.Document">
 
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fox;
before the <html> tag, put the following:

Code: 
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
 
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Isn't every customer the 'right' customer?
Click to expand...

Not everyone thinks so. See below:


Frulinger (2001) stated that whilst “rules and heuristics can be effective measures of usability”, they do not take the idiosyncrasies of different user types into account. If strict heuristics are applied to web design, and all websites look and function in the same way, there will be no challenge for the user and they will become bored. He added: “I propose that, with sufficient user research, a sense of ‘flow’ can be achieved that challenges users sufficiently without boring them. You don’t want to make your product usable for just any user. Rather, you want to make it usable for the right user.” (Frulinger 2001)
Click to expand...

FRUHLINGER, A., 2001. Making it Flow: Achieving the Optimal User experience. Intercom. [online] 48(10). Available from: http://www.ebscohost.com

Unfortunately you need a password to check the reference at EBSCO - you'll need to take my word for it.
 
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techfox, you have no doctype, and its a really big thing with me :P

Kay, thats all very well, but if every customer has to find their 'right' seller for each product they buy, we're going to be here all day. I think its best to just try to satisfy all customers as best you can!
 
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I think what the guy is suggesting is that you don't just go for the lowest common denominator. If, say, your customer base is mainly very web savvy then maybe you can include some interesting features which would be completely out of place on another site with a different type of customer. He's saying it's good to make your site interesting to your customer base rather than trying to please everyone. Horses for courses.
 
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I see what you mean - I try to make tools as simple as possible without losing functionality (that means pretty damn simple, though they still cause confusion amongst some customers), and often go OTT with help documentation.

Never included any horses though...
 
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Personally I've found that it doesn't matter how simple you make things or how well you explain them - there are always those who can't read what's right under their noses. :twisted:

I've never included horses either but I once bought a goat-related domain on impulse after consuming a few beers.
 
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I am all for taking advantage of richer media opportunities over broadband and perhaps offering different experiences for those customers on faster connections.

There are still a huge number of customers on dial up so you will have to be very clear on customer segmentation/targeting to be sure there are sufficient numbers on broad band.

Furthermore, do you build for 512k, 2mb, 8mb?

I would not say that building sites with low overheads and high levels of accesibility represent the lowest common denominator. The zen garden reference (although not an illustration of the best way to design business websites) does show that the presentation and hence worklow/useability is completely open to the designer.

If you pushed me, I could probably still write some 6502 machine or assembler code but I would much rather use a modern compiled computer language and accept the overhead that even the best optimising compilers can never remove. As is often found with many applications though, it can make people very lazy or simply forgetful. I would not want to see weight added to web content without good reason.

Stuart

PS. The only reason my original post has been locked after many many months of being open is that someone came and posted an advert for their web services on the end of it recently. Please do feel free to provide feedback in new threads and where we reach consensus (or even consistent and clear disagreement) I can update the original post accordingly to keep it fresh.
 
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