The NextStage CRO tells us how to make sure your website is busy with traffic, not visually busy.
We're continuing an exercise introduced in my last column about designing information so that it can be seen. That column contained references to some scientific papers, the contents of which I boiled down to three rules. I shared the first two in that column:
Rule #1: People ignore what they don't know they should see.
Rule #2: People see what they want to see.
Along with the exercise, there were some important questions asked in that column:
- What gets someone's attention when they're engaged by your marketing material?
- Is what engages them something on your website or in your materials, or are they easily pulled away by distractions?
- Is what engages them on your website or in your materials something that you want to get their attention?
And to all these there is the caveat: there's a big difference between getting attention, keeping attention and making things stick once you've got their attention.
The exercise and what it means
In the previous column, I offered an exercise that matched single, important messages in your marketing material to single, defining visual statements that communicated those single, important messages. This part of the exercise is useful for more than just designers. We've had marketing, advertising, sales -- everyone including CEOs, CMOs and CIOs -- in our trainings go through this exercise to help synchronize a group's thinking on their messaging across all channels.
A lack of synchronization means a "single, important message" isn't known; the exercise stops at that point until some agreement is reached. You may need to do some persistent questioning to get team members synchronized.
The effort is always worth it if for nothing more than a tension breaker. Consider the following examples of messages matched to visual statements that came out of some classes:
An important element of this part of the exercise is to know when to work and when just to do. I'm impressed by people who do these exercises perfectly the first time around. I also quickly tell others to "make a game of it. This is like playing the piano or clarinet: you need to practice a little each day. That way you can really impress people when the time comes to sit down and really play."
The second part of the exercise was to take your single, visually defining statements and -- with your eyes closed -- place these statements on a sheet of paper that represents whatever media you're designing for. Sometimes this part of the exercise needs to be repeated until you're happy with the result. The key is to place these visually defining statements on your media so that they will be recognized and evaluated. Remember, these are the three to five important messages that you want your audience to recognize, know and appreciate about your offerings.
Important to this part is to realize that your visual statements should slow but not stop people from visually traversing your material. You want them to come back to something of interest, not stop at one spot and miss your other important messages.
Order, placement, overlap and over the edge
Pick one of the pages you created in the second part of the exercise, one with which you're particularly pleased.
Order: Can you remember or do you know the order in which you placed your elements on your media? Which visual statement was placed first, second, third and so on? Congratulations, you've just learned which elements are most obvious to you and are clearest in your mind's eye.
Placement: Which elements did you place at the top of the media? Which did you place at the bottom? Which did you place in the center? On the left and right? Congratulations, what you've just learned is which elements should be photo quality images or animations, which should be graphics, which should be text, links and so on.
Overlap: Do any of your elements overlap others? Congratulations, you've just discovered where people viewing your material will be confused, which single, important messages will be in conceptual conflict in their minds.
Over the edge: Did any of your visual statements run over the edge of the page when you laid out the design (remember, you had your eyes closed)? These elements don't belong on what you're designing. Perhaps they're a subpage of a website, beneath the fold on a webpage, inside a leaflet or on the backside of collateral material
Size matters
What comes next is especially important to any company with marketing materials that include:
- Some network's marketing material
- Material from some affiliate program
- Some other company's material in the same visual field as your company's material.
These things normally happen on large sites with high traffic volumes, although all sites can benefit from this part of the exercise.
Compare your most satisfying media layout to what really exists on your current media, and then ask yourself these questions:
Question #1: Is the other company's material where this company's material should be?
Question #2: Is the other company's material going to distract people from or attract people to this company's material?
One element of the research from which these questions and exercises grew had to do with how much information, textual or otherwise, an individual can recognize before they can't recognize anything. In other words, people will stop seeing everything when there's too much to see.
It gets worse, though, because a complex visual field (like a busy website, a software interface, marketing material, video, animation… take your pick) can cause things to be lost even to the determined observer. This becomes the third rule that grew out of that research:
Rule #3: People won't be able to find what they're looking for when there's too much for them to see, regardless of how hard they're looking for it. (Think "Where's Waldo?")
And the minute your client, your customer, your prospect, your site visitor, your audience begins to lose the ability to see what's in front of them, you've lost them. You want your sites, your marketing material, your productions and all else that describes or is your offerings to be busy with traffic, not visually busy.
If your site is visually busy, then all you'll do is send your audience to a competitor who can communicate their message without blinding the prospect, and it's doubtful you want that.
Summary
This column and the previous one covered some research NextStage and others have been conducting on what people see when they look at something and, as it applies to your marketing efforts, takes on the three questions:
Question #1: What gets someone's attention when they're engaged by your marketing material?
Question #2: Is what engages them something on your website or in your materials, or are they easily pulled away by distractions?
Question #3: Is what engages them on your website or in your materials something that you want to get their attention?
I'll be bringing more of this and similar research to you in future columns.
Be seeing you. Depending on where we look, that is.
Joseph Carrabis has been everything from butcher to truck driver to Senior Knowledge Architect to Chief Research Scientist. His 22 books and 225 articles have ranged among cultural anthropology, mathematics, information mechanics, language acquisition, neurolinguistics, psychodynamics and psychosocial modeling--- and other eclectic topics. His knowledge and data designs have been used by Caltech, Citibank, DOD, IBM, NASA, Owens-Corning and Smith-Barney among others. Carrabis is CRO and Founder of NextStage Evolution and NextStage Global, and founder of KnowledgeNH and NH Business Development Network. He is also inventor and developer of Evolution Technology. You can download sections of Carrabis' next book, "Reading Virtual Minds," at www.hungrypeasant.com.