Effectively communicating via the web

By Gates Matthew Stoner © 2001

 

Web sites can (1) enhance outreach and credibility, (2) focus attention, (3) increase interest, and (4) aid retention. These four benefits are very attractive for community outreach and education, however, a web site overloaded with too many elaborate features can serve as powerful distractions and decrease the effectiveness of their message. Additionally, poorly prepared web sites which are not readable, relevant, and overly complex not only reduce effectiveness but can have a negative impact by increasing user frustration and decreasing interest in the message. The decisions you make in preparing a web site should always consider how to best achieve these four benefits while avoiding the temptation to overwhelm your audience by abusing too many special features available for web development

Before you start

Several important questions should be asked when preparing a web site. These questions will guide whether or not you choose to use certain functions and programming tools, such as CGI, Java, and database solutions. First, what is your purpose for the web site? Often the answer to this question is considered only after determining what 'cool effects can we use.' You should not choose to have certain features just because everyone "else is doing it." The effort might not be worth the trouble and possible distractions can take away from the effectiveness of your message. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal reported that Gen. Hugh Shelton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon, issued an order to skip the bells and whistles in PowerPoint™ and just get to the point. The same is true for web sites -- if your audience is too absorb in watching the special effects or trying to navigate a confusing web site structure, they are not attending to your message. Hence, you have lost your audience and achieved the opposite effect you indeed for your web site. Can you achieve your purpose without Java applets or Flash movies? If so, the effort and expense might not be worth the trouble when your main purpose is to clearly and credibly inform or persuade your audience. Audience considerations are crucial to the decisions you will make when preparing your web site.

How much material is to be presented?

Three common mistakes when preparing web sites are to (1) bury information where few users will ever find it, (2) assume everyone will travel in a linear fashion through the web site, and (3) overwhelm the user with too much information that they just give up and go to other web sites. Good web pages should serve as signposts for your audience and highlight your main points. As signposts, they will direct users to other helpful information in an interactive manner, which is flexible to the needs of multiple users. The great diversity in technical proficiency of web users requires designers to create usable solutions for large audiences instead of creative designs usable by only the technologically sophisticated. Poor web pages have too much information and often are formatted in a manner, which does not aid reading from the screen. Web pages should, like a good presentation, guide your audience through your presentation and reinforce the main points, thus focusing attention and aiding the retention of your message.

 

Good Rules to Follow

A rule can serve as effective guide, but also can be a constraint for designing a web site. Several "rules" are suggested below to aid in creating an effective presentation via web site, but like all rules there are situations in which it is best to ignore the rule. A guiding principal in preparing web sites is do they serve your purpose. Thus, violations to these are completely appropriate if they serve your purpose.

Choosing Colors

Color choice is a very important decision when preparing a web site since it will impact your audience's ability to read the pages and too much color can be very distracting. The limited use of color can focus attention to key terms and concepts. No more than 2-3 colors should be used on the same page and a consistent use of the same color scheme will avoiding confusing the audience. Your use of color should serve your purpose, thus radically changing your color scheme occasionally can be quite effective, while the over use of various colors can be distracting.

Color contrast is light colors on a dark background or vice-versa dark colors on a light colored background. High color contrast aids your audience in reading from the screen. While low color contrast (i.e. light colored text on a light background) can be very difficult to read and even more difficult depending on lighting and the computer screen. The best approach is to always use high contrast colors, such that the user is able to easily read the screen.

Navigation on a web site can be enhance by a specific color scheme, which directs and reinforces the layout of the website. The choice of particular colors with certain sections or areas of your website can aid users in understanding the virtual layout of the site as well as remind them how to get back to certain information. This example operates on the same principle of the use of color to help people remember where they parked in a public garage. The design point to be recognized is to enhance the user's experience by reducing frustrating and incorporating design elements which aid navigation and comprehension of the web site. Often the use of color is not clearly thought through in web design and instead web pages overwhelm the user to just be "cool."

Margins

Margins are common to business reports and memos, but often in web sites margins are ignored as designers attempt to place too much content on a single web page. The result is web page becoming unreadable since the font size is reduced in an attempt to fit all the content or the page is so long users do not scroll to the bottom of the screen and read all the content. Television production students learn a rule to create "TV safe" shots, such that all the important action appears in the center of the screen. Various sized television sets cut off the side margins differently, thus to be "TV safe" is to never shot any action near the sides of the frame. The same is true for computer monitors &endash; the design of web pages need to consider not all users will have large monitors thus fixed-ratio designs might result in important links or other information appearing off the screen. It is crucial to establish the center of the screen as the focal point for your audience to guide their attention and not place any information where it might not been seen. The key is to find a balance between reinforcing your main message without overwhelming your audience with too much information. A successful combination can maximize credibility, interest and retention of your message.

Readability

Several formatting tips can increase the readability of a web site for the audience and these tips can also aid retention and focus attention to the main points of the presentation. Font selection and text formatting can produce different results depending on the web browser of the user. Standard fonts, such as Times and Arial, are best for most web browsers and are recommended for their readability. Italics can be very difficult to read on a computer screen and should be avoided. Additionally, some fonts might display differently on Macintosh versus PC computers, thus selection of a standard font can ensure a web page displays the same to all users.

Disability Access

A limitation of many of the fancy features available for web site development is that users with disabilities are unable to access those sites. Corporate web sites (e.g. BMW), which use fancy graphic base links, are not viewable to visually impaired users using screen readers. The screen readers look for text and the graphic based web links without ALT-text tags can not be processed. CAST is an organization that provides Bobby, a free service help web designers identify and repair significant barriers to access by individuals with disabilities (http://www.cast.org/bobby/). The guidelines provided by CAST aid web designers in producing web sites accessible to all users, which is really important for an institution to distribute its message to a large and diversity audience.

Java, Flash, and other web widgets

Perhaps the greatest fault of many web sites is the incorporation of technologies which do not add to the user experience but rather take away from it. The implementation of non-core web technologies (e.g. Flash or Shockwave animation), bandwidth intensive content (streaming media), and Java is all of these technologies can create problems for a web user to access your content. The user who leaves your web site because of incompadibties issues with their web browser, bandwidth connection, or computer will not receive your message and hence you have achieved the opposite purpose for your web site. You are driving away customers and potential clients.

Not all users have high-bandwidth connections to download large content files, such as streaming media and large animation files. A well design web site will offer multiple version to accommodate those with 56k or slower modem connection and can not download the content. This approach allows your message to still be received and is the most optimal solution. Technologies not standard in the recent releases of Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator can also cause problems. For example, Flash is not a standard technology bundled within these programs, as such users without the free Flash player can miss content on your web site.While Java is supposed to be a core-bundled and cross-platform technology, many implementations of Java can result in the web visitor's computer crashing and increasing frustration. Unless, you have a strong need to use java scripting most basic functions can be achieved without Java.

Conclusions

Effectively presenting material the web can enhance outreach and credibility, focus attention, increase interest, and aid retention. Often these four benefits are achieved with a simple, clear, and well-designed web site, which is not overloaded with too many elaborate features and organized in a manner individuals can easily find the information they want. Poorly designed aids which are not readable, and confusing to navigate can have a negative impact the effectiveness of the message. The decisions you make in preparing web sites should always consider how to best achieve these four benefits while avoiding the temptation to overwhelm your audience by abusing the special features available for web development.

 

© 2001 Gates Matthew Stoner. Email: gates_matthew_stoner@hotmail.com