Mowing the Digital Landscape

We all know that the design of your Web site can make or break its ability to effectively market your brand. Research has shown that visitors decide whether or not they like your site within roughly 1/20th of a second. Yes, first impressions really do count online as well as in person. But can we be too consumed with the details of design, such as font size and color scheme, that we forget the big picture? Author John Allsopp thinks so.

In his article, A Dao of Web Design, Allsopp argues that the flexibility of the medium should be embraced, not considered a limitation. There is a chasm between the “web as we know it, and the web as it would be,” stemming for an inability to move past the characteristics of Web publishing’s ancestor, print media. The author argues that designers need to rethink their roles and be willing to allow the viewer to control the look and feel of the page. After all “hardness and stiffness,” as the Taoists say, are the “attributes of death.”

Ensuring the form follows function is not an easy task. But it makes sense. After all, as consumers become more comfortable with Web 2.0 platforms and social networking sites, they will increasingly expect corporate sites to offer a similar level of adaptability.

Take a look at your company’s site. Is it a one-size-fits-all mechanism? Or can consumers with various needs and interests view your content in a format the suits them? Following Burger King’s lead, do you invite visitors to have it their way? If not, you may want to begin adopting the Taoist doctrine of “accepting the ebb and flow of things, nurturing them, but not owning them.”