King Content Takes Queen Interactivity

[jmiller]

Content, content, content is the mantra that has been driving Web designers for quite some time. The importance of content hasn't waned - no, not in the slightest - but the results of a decade-long study released by the Web Marketing Association that the focus on content is a bit myopic. The more evolved Netizen is more difficult to impress.

Looking at trends across more than 80 industries and nearly 10,000 Websites, WMA's Internet Standards Assessment Report (ISAR) is the fruit of the WMA's WebAward competition. The report revealed that industries overall excelled in content creation, but the most successful sites received the highest marks in design, ease-of-use, and innovation.

William Rice, president of WMA, says that the lack of focus on design and ease-of-use across industries "may close the door to many users." This echoes Dr. Jakob Nielsen's assertion that Website usability will be the biggest driving factor for success.

"Innovation, while critical to a Web site's success, actually received the lowest average scores across all industries," said Rice. " We believe this is due to the fact that innovation is so elusive and difficult to maintain - what is groundbreaking in one industry may be commonplace in another."

The report found that gaming, music, automobile, and sports sites excelled in the three areas most critical to online success. Over the last decade, consumer-focused sites featuring vibrant content and high interactivity have excelled because of their ability to meet the high expectations of the audience.

Gaming sites, like SOCOM II, came out as natural leaders. These sites are manned by experience designers who understand the intricacies of Flash animation and the benefits of online communities, including message boards and chat features. The younger audiences typically demand more of the sites they visit.

The younger demographics drive the success of music sites like Red Bull Music labs as well. Like gaming sites, the user experience makes the difference.

"Music sites have conquered the age-old dilemma regarding the use of technology, where too little equals boring and too much means the site can be overwhelming. The music sites we've evaluated over the years have demonstrated the ability to build a loyal following by effective uses of technology to stream rich media content without sacrificing usability."

One of the most hotly contested industries, automobile sites realized early that customers were most likely to engage an auto brand in the privacy of their home or office, rather than in a showroom with a commission-driven sales person. As a result, this is one of the few industries that has beaten the average scores for the WebAwards every year since the competition's inception. Toyota Scion was a big winner in this category.

Sports sites like Nike Basketball won out in the areas of design and content. Fanatics keep the bar high when seeking out perpetually updated content. A better design just seems to add to the content experience.

"As Internet bandwidth developed, so did the ability for Web sites to deliver a dynamic rich media experience that merges online entertainment with e-commerce to create a compelling interaction for users," added Rice. "While content is still king, it's a Web site's ability to interact with users in interesting ways that keeps an audience coming back."

[JKomp]

Content, content, content is the mantra that has been driving Web designers for quite some time.

I take your point and it should be the case but I see little evidence to say that it actually is. Far too many sites still have very poor quality and unoptimized content. What will it take for them to get the point? Content is King long scorned.

[commanderdave]

I am an artist with hundreds of paintings with descriptions and subsequent pages of many of the works. Building the content, as most web developers know, can be the largest obstacle that we face. Often clients that want a website don't realize that they have to write their own content. If I had wanted to pull teeth, I'd have been a dentist. It is like that sometimes. I often tell tell people that I can't illustrate a story without knowing it.

After posting a few questions in this forum I have had to go back to my site and create meta tags for each page. Fortunately, I had written all of the content for each page and I am currently pulling the rel event words from the content and putting them in my Title, Deception tags and in the Keywords. Because some of the titles of my artwork are just a little on the edge, an example would be Absolute Uncertainty, I'm getting a lot of traffic based on those words and other titles. Perhaps the information that the person is searching for isn't about art but something else, the viewers are clicking around and staying. I get emails that tell me that the information wasn't what I was looking for but, wow, fun site, there is a lot to look at. I think in the case of my site that people are more interested in the artwork than the content. I recently read a statistic that said that people read 25% slower on a monitor as to a book or physical publication. I found that very interesting.

But the bottom line is Content is very important to any ones site. People are looking for information and if a company's site doesn't have effective content, your user, or new client, is outta there! You have like 2.5 seconds to keep a user on your site interested.

With large sites or just to make your site more user friendly, get a search engine installed right away. This will help the visitor to find or find out you don't have, the information that they are looking for. I hooked up a FREE search engine to my painting directory and I love the way it works, searches, and displays. Go to www.gigablast.com to get your free search engine installed on your site. Once installed, play with your search engine to find out what is showing up and realize how you can do even better.

Content Rules, but so does a great painting.

If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room, CommanderDave

[DrTandem1]

I don't think it takes much of a study to realize that average content that is easy to find/navigate will always be more successful than better content that has too many barriers between it and the visitor.

Here is a list of some of those barriers assuming that the visitor has already found the site:

~Splash pages, especially animated ones
~Large file sizes that slow load times, even using broadband
~Pages that require plug-ins, especially uncommon ones
~Poor navigation
~Requiring log-ins or registrations
~Broken links
~"Coming Soon" pages
~Font that is difficult to read
~Audio/background music
~Annoying JavaScript effects such as tracing cursors

You could take high quality content and kill its effectiveness by using the above attributes. This is so basic, yet so misunderstood that it requires someone to do a study?

[skateservice]

sometimes it takes someone to publish a study for anyone to actually listen. Silly people.

[sdrury]

Content may be king on the website - but I don't think time is taken in planning how to present this effectively?. At web-aviso (http://www.web-aviso.com) I and have had much positive feedback from my clients that I have struck an effective balance.

There is so much information out there now - and many sites present repetitive content - added to the fact that the smaller fonted CSS styled sheets need to be forever scrolled down by the user.

I suggest that if we want to innovate on the web - we mustn't forget what our peers enabled us to do and how they did it.

[jmiller]

maybe my verbose dribblings have led to the wrong focus...sorry about that

I'm seeing a lot of discussion of content, but what might be more useful here, as content has been beaten like an ancient drum, is a discussion of how to make your site more usable, eye-pleasing, and interactive

the point i was making was that while content is still hugely important, it shouldn't be the only egg in your basket

[MtraX]

I think audio can have a huge impact if used in the right way. Problem is there aren't many design companies out there (not when taking the overall field into account) that know how to utilise it properly. The most memorable sites I have visited have audio and flash, allthough when I'm searching for information, I don't want these to hamper download speed etc. I guess it's up to the web developer to realise that strategy towards a specific target market and goals are an extremely important part of building any decent website.

Just my 2c.

MtraX

[MarcieZoob]

The web offers more media options than any other form of advertising but very few websites utilize what's available. As a web surfer, I am drawn in by interactive elements on a website - images that zoom in and out, videos to watch, audio files to listen to, things to click on. I like the interactivity and I try to convince my clients to consider adding interactivity into their website.

With so much focus on accessibility and validation, maybe web developers are more wary of using what's available...?

Just a thought.