The Challenge of World Wide Web Design
How do you hang on to your audience?
by Christine Collie Rowland, September 1995
The "Internet", "Net", and "Web"
are destined to be the buzzwords of the late 90's as surely as
"Information Highway" and "500-Channel Universe"
were the buzzwords of the early 90's.
Most corporations now have E-mail addresses for staff, and if
they're not yet on the Web (World Wide Web or WWW), they are certainly
aware that competitors have set up WWW storefronts making them
accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week to an Internet-connected
community estimated to be 35 million worldwide.
There are many reasons why companies should be on the Net. Manufacturers
should think of a Web site as analogous to a trade show exhibit
with the potential to: enhance their image, generate leads for
follow-up by sales staff; and enable direct sales through on-line
ordering. Professional publishers have already recognized the
Net's growing importance as a vehicle for distribution and every
major newspaper and magazine has launched a Web site.
The broadcast industry as a whole has been slow out of the gate.
Some networks and stations have a Web
presence but many are dull,
uninspired sites, out of step with the medium. Broadcasters would
be well advised to look very closely at the WWW because soon,
with better Web authoring tools and more bandwidth through fiber
optics, it will be their future.
It's no wonder corporations without a WWW presence are scrambling
to figure out "this Internet thing" and throw up some
Web home pages. Some are hastily putting up Web pages with less
design consideration than they'd give a one-colour leaflet. In
doing so, these companies are seriously underestimating the sophistication
of the Internet and its community of Web surfers.
Channel surfing, the bane of television broadcasters and advertisers,
is a penny-ante challenge compared to Web surfing. Try to imagine
a world in which every program encourages surfing with hot links
to other programs on other stations and other networks. Then imagine
that world with tens, even hundreds of thousands of "channels".
How do you hang on to your audience?
That's the design challenge on the Web.
Because of the nature of the Internet and its millions of hypertext
links, when you start at one WWW location, clicking a link to
another location and another, you inevitably end up at unexpected
destinations, discovering and browsing through locations you may
never find again unless they capture your interest enough for
you to pause and write down their URL (Web site address) or bookmark
them in your Netscape browser in order to return to them later.
This means if you don't want your Web site to be bypassed and
forgotten, your pages had better look good. Darn good. And the
site had better have fascinating and genuinely useful content.
Because the competition isn't just a mere 500-channel universe,
it's a lively collection of 200,000 multimedia hypertext destinations
all clamoring for attention. And this number is increasing at
the rate of over 2,000 new sites per week.
Web surfers are a fickle lot, always looking for the newest and
coolest site, and if your new site is a bore, it won't get a return
visit.
A Web site needs to sparkle at its debut. If that means making
a choice between putting up a few rushed, ho-hum, pages or waiting
a few weeks or months longer and putting up pages that will be
noticed, reviewed and returned to, then the choice should be clear
- wait. Get it right the first time and make a splash with your
Web launch. This is rule number one of WWW publishing.
Rule number two is that Web sites need to be regularly updated
and refreshed. You could say that's the whole point of Web publishing.
Don't expect return visits if you leave your newly launched site
static. The Blue Cat Design
site gets
revised, updated and expanded on a near weekly basis.
Some sites, such as news media sites and on-line catalogues with
frequent product promotions, need to be updated daily. The launch
of your Web pages on-line does not mean "There, that Internet
thing is taken care of". Instead, the work has just begun.
The good news is, revisions are quick and easy to make. And it
doesn't require on-location expertise. I'm often asked by clients
if they'll have to hire staff to manage their Web site after it's
launched. In most cases the answer is "no". For the
average company, HTML revisions to Web pages need take no more
than 4-10 hours per month and it's usually much more cost-effective
to out-source.
It can all be handled remotely. The HTML files (the programming
specifications that make up Web pages) can be revised and sent
via modem and FTP(File Transfer Protocol) software to your host
computer site from anywhere in the world. All it takes is a couple
of minutes and your revised Web pages are up and visible to the
world.
What's involved in designing a successful Web site? The criteria
are much the same as in designing any successful interactive multimedia
production: interesting content organized in a thoughtful and
accessible manner; creative visual design; ease of use through
navigational elements such as clickable buttons and graphic elements
and a healthy helping of fun and entertainment.
It's not always easy, or possible, to achieve all of the above
within the HTML structure, given the current limited Web authoring
tools available to designers and the current generation of Web
browser software. But things are about to change.
Let's start with a look at the tools available, and let me try
to give you an idea of how quickly the Web designer's toolbox
has metamorphosed since February this year when Blue Cat Design
created the home page of the Bell Centre for Creative Communications,
a $36 million Silicon Graphics training center in Toronto.
In February, Netscape Navigator, the
WWW browser software used
by over 80% of WWW surfers, was at version 1.0 and could only
display plain grey backgrounds and black text in a single font
style. This didn't leave a designer much creative elbow room.
Today, Netscape is at version 1.1. We're still stuck with only
one font style but now Netscape is able to display different colored
backgrounds and colored text, even patterned backgrounds, based
on any GIF or JPEG image that you specify in your accompanying
HTML programming. Patterned backgrounds can be an enhancement
to a site - or a pox, as anyone who has witnessed the proliferation
of truly ugly backgrounds on the Web can attest.
Later this year, there will be another major transformation of
the Web when a major upgrade to Netscape is released. In June, Macromedia. and Netscape
Communications Inc. announced a technologyintegration that will change the character of the WWW from hyperlinked
pages to a fully interactive multimedia environment. The collaboration
will see an integration of multimedia playback software from Macromedia's
top-selling Macromedia Director into the Netscape browser software.
As the bandwidth of the Internet continues to expand with such
innovations as cable modems and new compression modes, complete
multimedia titles created with Director will be seamlessly delivered
over the Internet.
As a multimedia designer working with Macromedia Director, I'm
excited about this news. Now past and current multimedia productions
will not only be playable on stand-alone Macintosh and Windows
platforms but also on the Web. The early days of static grey Netscape
backgrounds will soon be long forgotten.
The next major development we can expect to see is
Adobe's PDF
(Portable Document Format) becoming a rival to HTML, currently
the Web's main authoring language. Adobe and Netscape are collaborating
to incorporate Adobe's Acrobat viewer into Netscape Navigator.
Although it is now possible to download PDF files from Web sites
and use Adobe Acrobat Reader to display them, the PDF format won't
be viable until it is fully integrated into Netscape and until
Adobe overcomes the unwieldy file sizes of PDF files and hence
their slow downloading.
The reason why PDF presents a challenge to HTML, and why Internet
designers and publishers are eager to embrace PDF, is that it
gives the author/designer precise document control. It will allow
Web pages to retain their original look and feel across different
platforms - something impossible to do with HTML and the current
crop of Web browsers. This means that elaborate page layouts created
in Quark XPress or similar programs will be displayed exactly
the same way on the Web whether the user platform is UNIX, Windows
or Macintosh.
If you don't yet believe that the future is the Web, here's some
statistical food for thought. Computers outsold television sets
in North America for the first time ever in 1994. People who have
access to the Internet and its World Wide Web in their homes spend
more time on the Web than they do watching television. Imagine
the added draw the Web will have with the full multimedia playback
due by the end of 1995.
As the Economist intoned editorially in a recent issue: "The
Internet is not a fad." It's clear the World Wide Web will
continue to be the place to be for corporations - and Web surfers.
Christine Collie Rowland is Creative Director of BlueCat Design.
