Do websites need to look fantastic?
November 8, 2008
If you were faced with two equally suitable candidates for a job, would you choose the the most attractive?
If American, did you vote for Obama?
Obama for president
I’m not sure whether being presented with two equally good choices should be a reason to discriminate on attractiveness alone.
If presented with two equally suitable houses in the same area, would you buy the prettiest one?
OK, so that may be ambiguous, - but the answer is “No, of course I wouldn’t..”
Sometimes we just need to work harder to understand differences in our choices, because initial attractiveness is often superficial.
In case you disagree, just for a moment, imagine that you aren’t the sophisticated and discerning human being that looks back at you from the mirror. Put yourself in the shoes of someone really quite bad at making choices.
Firstly how do you know you’re that bad? Well, that marketing led vision of the perfect solution to your problem - it didn’t work our very well last time out, you do remember Smash?
You should know that instead of blaming the product or service, people blame themselves, for making bad choices. But, that bad feeling motivates people to try harder in choice making, which is great news for all those of us with great services and great end products.
But marketing campaigns, they’re smarter now too, pushing harder and faster than ever to make things even more attractive, to give us more choices, to stop us from making the wrong right decision!
Well, the answer is that this has been bubbling away for quite some time and we’ve all been around that block many times. We’re all a lot smarter than we used to be, and hardly any of us eats Cadbury’s Smash any more. Good advertising, but it left a bad taste in our mouths.
So, when people speculated whether people would vote for or against Obama because of the way he looked, because he was black, or not - and afterwards whether or not they voted to prove they weren’t racist. It took me right back to the 1980’s, it is a simplistic old world view, an old world argument, old hat.
I prefer to think Americans just worked harder at deciding, because their last choice went so badly wrong and made them feel terrible.
We, the People, are better at choosing than we used to be.
With that in mind, if you believe that making your website look fantastic will get you the business, then go right ahead.
It wouldn’t matter to me more than brushing my teeth, putting on a shirt and brushing my hair.
It’s about credibility, and people voted for that with their wallets.
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