In our industry, you’ll often hear people say things like “if someone can’t figure it out in 10 seconds then they’re gone.” Or “I checked out the site and I couldn’t figure out what they did so I left. Terrible design.” Or “if it takes more than a couple sentences to explain it then it’s not simple enough.” Or “too much to read!” Or “there are too many fields on this form!” Or “there are too many steps in this process.”
I’ve said some of these things in the past, so I understand the knee-jerk impulse that lead to these sorts of reactions.
However, something’s usually missing from these assessments of the situation: The actual customer’s motivation. How motivated is the customer to solve their problem? What are they here for?
If you’re just evaluating something purely on a design-principles basis, then it’s easy to be binary about it. Good, bad. Too slow, not clear enough, confusing, whatever.
But it’s lazy to evaluate things that way – and trust me, I know, I’ve been lazy about it in the past. I’ve just recently come to remember that you have to factor in motivation.
How motivated is the customer? If your motivation is to evaluate a design, how can you accurately comment on whether or not it’s good or bad unless you understand the customer’s motivation? Their motivation isn’t always to get in and get out as fast as possible.
Customers come to learn something, research something, consider something, buy something. If they are motivated, they may not mind spending five minutes reading. They want to read, they want to know. They’re OK investing their time to find something out if they really care about the answer.
For example, while a longer form – one that a designer might cringe at – might lead to fewer trial signups, it might also lead to higher-quality, more qualified leads. A longer form could weed out the people who are just poking around from the people who are really motivated to buy.
Is clearer better? Yes. Is brevity better? Not always. Is speed important? It depends. How much detail is required? Just enough? Should you make it easier for people to get better answers sooner? Yes. But that doesn’t mean every question demands a 10 second answer and that doesn’t mean every form needs to be three fields or less.
Eduárd
on 07 Mar 13Great article. Keep it up, I really enjoy reading posts like this. One small thing: I think there is a misspelling in the last paragraph: ever instead of every.
gfurry
on 07 Mar 13I completely agree. Auto sites are a great example. Sure I want to see a nice design, pictures, and basic facts right away. I also want to know everything that has ever been written about the car. No detail is too small. It seems current automotive sites try to be a digital version of an 8 page brochure. That design philosophy makes sense for print with limited pages and high cost for adding more. Not for the web. Sure I want to get the basic info in a few seconds but I want to dig deeper a lot deeper. To do this I have to go to other sites like autoblog that might not post the exact message the car company wants to deliver.
Clapp
on 07 Mar 13That is a really good example, @gfurry.
Simon
on 07 Mar 13Reminds me of the Planet Money post on The Dish. After removing ads and going the subscription model, the Dish’s long posts are the more popular then the short posts. The paying users are more interested in the high quality long posts.
Andrew
on 07 Mar 13I got lazy and knee-jerked an hour ago on why we put a confirmation dialog on a buried “Log Out” button.
cici
on 07 Mar 13Ha! An interesting rant to come after “The ease of Orchid care” and it touches on something that’s been bugging me about their design solution. Although Phalaenopsis are the easiest to care for, it’s a little bit more than “give it X amount of water every so many days” and so their solution seemed to be more about the cleverness than the completeness. Granted, we don’t really know what is printed on the cup…....
Mezza
on 07 Mar 13Cogent words.
Jeff
on 08 Mar 13Same thing with videos, especially when it comes to education.
Yes, a video on YouTube designed to attract people to your website needs to be short and hook the viewer within the first 10-15 seconds or so. But if you’ve got a captive audience of employees who are getting paid to watch a training video, for example, you can drag it out a little longer. And of course there is a spectrum of examples in-between, like a video selling an expensive and complicated product to B2B customers who might not mind investing a little extra time.
TDG
on 08 Mar 13Exactly. Regarding the concern about long content below the fold, I used to tell people, “If your visitor wants to read your content, they’ll read below the fold.” When you latch onto a news story, does it matter if it goes below the fold? No.
Truls
on 08 Mar 13Well said. I’m more frequently annoyed by the lack of details and information than I am with too much information. If you have to, create a “details” tab with the additional information, but have it there.
I would like to second @gfurrys comment. I spent ages trying to find a car with three ISO-fix seats in the back, and none of the fancy brochures covered this (also, you can’t search these on the site). Ended up in some obscure forum for the information.
Terry Sutton
on 08 Mar 13Every single Apple problem I’ve searched for fits the bill here as well. Combing thorough the Apple support forums is an infuriating experience, but one I’ve endured dozens of times to (not) find a solution to a problem.
David Reeves
on 08 Mar 13Jason- Great post. You may have run across this before, but BJ Fogg’s Behavior Model can be a useful construct to think about this kind of question.
In his model, you can plot the likelihood of any given behavior as the intersection of our Motivation to accomplish it, and our Ability to do so, sparked by a Trigger (call to action).
The useful thing about the model is that it forces you to think clearly about the desired behavior/end result; and to understand each person’s motivation level, which is pretty hard to change in the short term.
Then as designers, we can work on improving Ability (making it easier), and providing a good call to action.
Zuber
on 08 Mar 13I have been writing copy off and on over the last week and continuously battling between clarity, brevity and resonance. My worries and conclusions have always lead me to less is more effective because most people are lazy and just scan the page. But this post gave me a different perspective and I would agree 100% that weeding out the peeping toms from wanted/paying customers is more beneficial.
Thanks.
Paul
on 08 Mar 13Good to hear you post this. I recently lived this experience. Also, thank you for everything you do – your writings and your web apps. They are so helpful and awesome. :-) You folks are the best.
Devesh
on 09 Mar 13Completely agree with you! Sometimes as an end user our motivation is big. And that has to count.
Wilman Arambillete
on 10 Mar 13Great post Jason! I am one of those who used to think that way but I realize it all depends on motivation as you say. Most of the times when I am asked about this or any other behavior as a user, I try to picture myself doing that and just as you mention, if I am just browsing around and not looking for nothing in particular, a good design and a simple message is what prevents me from leaving a website.
However, when I am after some service and some website attracts my attention, I take the time to do a more thorough research until I find what I am looking for. This is definitely related to my motivation of getting more information about that.
This discussion is closed.