Yearning for Web site simplicity
Early this fall, The New York Times noted that Procter & Gamble planned to launch a multi-million dollar campaign to reinforce Ivory's heritage of purity. Although its advertising agency did dream up the heretical idea of slipping in about a thousand bars that actually sink (lucky purchasers could be eligible for a quarter of a million dollars), the campaign's focus, according to marketing director Alexandra Lipinski is pure nostalgia. In a troubling age defined by new threats to our personal security, Lipinski told the Times that this initiative will "help bring Ivory to the forefront of consumers' minds as they think about simplifying their lives."
Simplicity may be the new mantra of our age. The Wall Street Journal's personal technology columnist Walter Mossberg mused that too many hardware and software companies still don't understand the importance of making their products easy to use. Advertising Age scanned the e-commerce landscape at the onset of yet another critical Christmas season for online retailers and proclaims "Top Marketers Focus and Simplify Web Sites."
Ironically, this yearning for simplicity remains closely tied to our enjoyment for all things complex. We don't consider how the water reached the bathtub, or why a Palm Pilot works when we press a button. We cover these complex systems with a veneer of simplicity, so we can use them effortlessly. Unfortunately, too many Web sites fail to achieve this feat and instead present information in a manner that may be too complex for many users to fully understand or utilize.
Is there a simple way to make things simple? Yes, if we recognize that when we communicate, all of the participating parties are interdependent of each other, especially in regards to the Internet, a medium that encourages close interaction. First, you need a common language, so that both parties assign the same meaning to words or imagery. Second, you need shared experiences, so that your messages fall within the correct context. Third, you need reciprocal intelligence. In other words, does the intelligence of the speaker match the intelligence of the audience? You can only be as smart as the least intelligent person within the group you address.
A site automatically establishes intellectual requirements for its use by the way it incorporates these three elements of interdependence. Even Web beginners can use a search engine, such as Google, because it eliberately strives to keep these intellectual requirements at a bare minimum. On the other hand, sites that appeal to more specific audiences, such as Slashdot,impose greater requirements on its participants. As the common connections between site and user become narrower, only people with specialized knowledge will find value from these Web properties. Everyone else will essentially be shut out.
Of course, the Internet never needed to consider interdependence in its nascent years, because it catered to one of the most sophisticated and intelligent audiences in the history of this planet. These early users embraced what 95 percent of the populace would have considered intolerable. Today, the audiences are broader and more diverse, and complexity, once a highly regarded badge of intellectual prowess, represents a major vulnerability.
Consider the theories of David Keys, an archaeology correspondent for the London daily, The Independent. To demonstrate the inherent weaknesses that lie within a structure with too many internal interdependencies, he chronicled a turbulent period within the middle of the first millennium, in which a series of climatic calamities and pandemics brought down every major established civilization within a century's time. The era's most modern societies had become too complex to adjust to the changes around them. Yet, their less sophisticated rivals thrived. Simplicity dramatically won out over complexity in a high stakes battle for survival.
Common sense dictates that sites that make themselves easy to use will attract greater audiences than cumbersome, complex alternatives. When Web sites strive to reduce the interdependencies that define their relationship with their audience, they, in turn, will automatically reduce the complexities that discourage usage in the first place. Web sites that include non-intuitive navigational links, rely heavily on regional colloquialisms, or require visitors to possess specialized knowledge become hostage to the perseverance and aptitude of potential visitors who must now determine how to get past these intellectual "roadblocks."
When we weigh down our sites with components that increase interdependencies, we are no different than the marketers who create sinking bars of Ivory Soap. When we extract the extraneous, clarify our messages, and most of all, listen to our audiences, our sites obtain a degree of purity that allow them float by their competitors.
Mike Sockol is a senior vice president and interactive practice leader at Makovsky & Company, a full service, award winning communications firm based in New York.