Make it like Google!
Web designers – what a difficult job. Having to listen to marketers, systems, and business development folk harp on about what they want a page to look and ‘feel’ like.
I was recently involved with a site redesign where I spoke with three different designers.
After bouncing some ideas off of them, I asked each of the designers what most of their clients ask for in terms of a new site design. Remarkably they all came up with the same answer- “Make it like Google. Very clean and simple.”
Google.com has such an intuitive, natural feel, and they’re making billions of dollars a year- it’s hard to not to want to imitate them. But this type of simple design may be right for one type of site, but not another other.
To design such a simple homepage, product mangers on the site need to have a unified, unwavering vision that this is the only way the site can be designed. But does this happen?
When I then asked whether the pages they designed turned out like Google, the answer was a resounding “No!” It’s easy to over-think and over plan to try to lead your site visitors by the hand.
Remember, less can be more.
