Australian Olive Oil Company

[Abikadabra]

I'm using a screen resolution of 1600 x 900 on my laptop and the content of the website is all below the fold. I think that's too much, having to scroll down to see even a single line of text.

Yesterday I attended a lecture given by a well known web designer. His lecture was mainly about designing for future technology. He said the whole concept of designing above the fold is null and void and that designers should be designing with pictures and not with text. He stated that the modern user is browsing with newer technology and is speed browsing, garnering information from a site in seconds rather than in minutes. In 2009 the average time a visitor spent browsing a website was 3 minutes and 42 seconds. It is now half that. Apparently visitors want to get an overall picture of what you do, how they can obtain what you do, and how they can contact you. They are not interested in spending time reading stuff on your site. The lecturer said that we should continue to use text for SEO purposes, but be aware that text used is not necessarily information the site visitor wants. He said the speed browser will whisk over the site garnering the information they feel they need, so it is important to design for this new breed of browsers. As many visitors will access your site on the run (in the car, on the bus, in their lunch break, at an appointment etc) you need to design with big pictures, and each picture should have a linking function, even if it is just to take the browser to the contact or about us page. He mentioned that speed browsers like to touch everything and see that thing expand or link to somewhere else.

One thing he said that I felt was quite interesting was that he said too many sites are way to big. He gave the example of website designers. He mentioned that WS designers have a tendency to "lecture" to people on their websites and that they stuff their sites full of 'articles' and informative resources in the belief that this is appropriate and effective SEO for google, and that visitors will consider this wonderful information to be so valuable that they will be grateful to the designer and decide to get him to make their website. He said e-commerce sites are possibly twice as large as they need to be, and that it is ludicrous to think that visitors to the site will actually read more than 2 pages. He said he personally gets frustrated by all the small print navigation bars that not only run along the top of the site, but also down the side, and he expressed that navigation bars are difficult to navigate on iphones and that we should abandon the navigation bar.

He summarised by saying design sites so that they are picture rich, not text rich, use big pictures, make sure every picture can be touched and linked to somewhere else that has significance to the visitor, the fold is null and void, and throw away the navigation bar as it no longer has a place in new technology.

I actually like nav bars, and I personally spend about 5 minutes on each site I visit, but speaking with my sons and their friends last night about the lecture, they agreed with the web designer. They are avid iphone users and access websites mainly from their phones. They said they only spend enough time on a site to get an overall picture of what is going on, they get the contact info, and that's all. They said they will stay on a site if the site looks appealing, but most importantly they will stay on the site if they can move around it easily, for example by touching pictures or large text panels to navigate on the site. They said they leave a site if they need to expand a nav bar to be able to read it, and they felt nav bars and subsequent menus are too fiddly to mess around with on their phones. They said they prefer text to be in point form, and they want the text to get straight to the crux of what the site is about. They agreed with the lecturer that big pictures that tell the story immediately entice them to stay on a site. Interestingly, they said they found sites designed for mobile phones to be a bit boring. They preferred sites designed for PCs that do not have nav bars, but also designed with touch-users in mind. They are not interested in slideshows or moving text or anything too fancy on a site. My sons and their friends are in their twenties and early thirties, and this is the demographic that the designer said we should be aiming to please as they are the biggest consumers on the planet and are probably our clients.

I would be interested to hear from others on this subject, and Frances if you think this should be moved elsewhere please feel free to pop it wherever you feel is more appropriate.

[pauland]

Yesterday I attended a lecture given by a well known web designer.

Who was it?

I think a lot of what was said is quite relevant - the move to mobile platforms is changing interactions greatly, though the vast majority of people aren't there yet.

I think the "Above the fold" advice is premature - I suspect it's related more to the notion that page interactions are changing - if you have a tablet you will be used to flicking to a new page or section and drilling down to get more detailed information. The tablet browsing experience is quite differrent to that of the desktop and I expect that browsing experience to migrate. Windows 8 will push that kind of interface. Touch interfaces require large controls not fiddly interfaces requiring precision.

I think the "above the fold" advice is going to be relevant always, though the fold in question may be differrent to what it is today ( for example, tablet web pages just need a flick to move to new content, that is far easier than scrolling with a mouse, so it's easier to access secondary content, but still the content we see initially ("above the fold") is always going to be the primary initial focus.

Things are changing fast.

There is an excellent intro to web design in the beautifully produced book, also entitled "Above the fold" by Brian Miller.

[Abikadabra]

Graham Someone.... I will find out his surname for you next week. He is English but lives in Victoria in Australia. He designs mainly for clothing designers and artists and musicians. He was invited to speak to our class (we are all newbies) whilst he was visiting Perth on business. He was very passionate about his profession, but also very critical. For example, he kept talking about how the pomposity of design and designers ego continually gets in the way of the end result, and that web designers need to listen more to their clients requests, but more importantly, he insisted that older designers (and he is one of them, possibly late 60s) needed to keep abreast of future technology and design predictive websites that cater for this. All the young ones in the class were savvy to what he was talking about and the lecture was very dynamic and interactive. I listened and took notes, but didn't feel I could contribute very much as I don't know very much!

[Big Frank]

He designs mainly for clothing designers and artists and musicians

well that answers my question anyway

[Abikadabra]

well that answers my question anyway

Haha! He spoke of the pomposity of design and designers ego, but I must have missed the bit about web designers snobbery .....

[Big Frank]

95%, maybe more, who knows, of web designers do NOT design for the "clothing designers and artists and musicians" market, they design for a far more mundane market, requiring a totally different set of guidelines. I don't mind that you call me a snob, I admit it whole-heartedly, proudly and with my hand firmly grasping my wallet, but I would mind if you put me in the same bag as the pompous gasbag that lectured to you.

[iamtheblues]

Frank, you are a breath of fresh air, not afraid to call a spade a shovel.
Bob.