Visitor Expectations and Your Website

Here's the homepage of Vivid Marketing. Snazzy, eh? It's sharp looking and interesting, but the web visitor's first reaction is likely to be "Huh?"

Creative companies often have this kind of surprise at their websites. It shows creativity and looks different. The visitor, one hopes, thinks "Ah, these guys are really creative and different! That's what I need."

There's an "enter here" button -- a definite improvement over the average site like this, which appears to be waiting breathlessly to see what you're going to do. And once you enter, you see the portfolio page below.




This fits the visitor's expectations of a web page. There's the logo in the upper left hand corner. There's the navigation across the top (down the left side would also work). There's the portfolio in the center. A little skimpy, a visitor might think, but what there is looks good. Ads down the side ... we'll ignore those...

But no, those aren't ads.That's the clever, creative arrangement of the portfolio. Mouseover one of those bright squares, and you'll see details on it in the center section.




I love this for the cleverness of it, and the visitor who sits down with it for a bit will see that Vivid does everything from trade show exhibits to billboards. Nice stuff, too. They're also nice people.

The thing is, a website like this is a trade-off. They're going to lose some visitors, because people get confused and frustrated by surprising web pages. Unless they have a strong motivation to stay, they'll usually leave if they feel confused and frustrated.

On the other hand, visitors who are highly motivated -- because they have heard about Vivid in some other way and are determined to learn more about them, for example -- may be very impressed and charmed by the creativity of the portfolio.

I'd take a middle path. I'd ditch the splash page and make a home page that had a clear statement (what we offer and how you can get it) and obvious contact info. I'd add a sentence to the portfolio page, particularly since there are people who don't use mouseover, that sort of gave instructions on how to use the page. In fact, I'd get some text on that page for the search engines, if nothing else. There's room for a couple hundred words on that page.

Is that the best choice for Vivid? Maybe not. If they use more traditional advertising to draw visitors and their website serves primarily as an introduction and display piece, then they may not care about search. They may not care about the occasional new visitor, either.

Vivid is a surprising website that might want to be surprising. What about your website? If your website is a bundle of surprises, and you're selling cameras or real estate, you've got a problem. Visitors haven't come to your website to play, but to buy that camera or look for that loft. When they're frustrated in their goal, they'll very likely just leave.

As a general rule, you ought to put things where people expect them to be. If you choose to make your website surprising, make sure you have a good reason for it.