A stroUX of genius

Van Gogh

In the sum­mer of 1881, the young painter fell mad­ly in love with his cousin Cor­nelia Adri­ana Vos-Strick­er, or ​“Kee”, for usabil­i­ty pur­pos­es. Vin­cen­t’s tim­ing sucked, because Kee was recent­ly wid­owed, not in the mood to enter­tain clingy rel­a­tives and, most impor­tant­ly, had zero inter­est in the stub­born artist. Her response to his dec­la­ra­tion of love was a suc­cinct ​“Nev­er, no, nev­er”. Not much room for inter­pre­ta­tion, Van Gogh.

But Vin­cent was a very pas­sion­ate young man refus­ing to accept defeat who set out to Ams­ter­dam to prove his resolve. When Kee’s father stood in the way, block­ing him from see­ing her, Vin­cent placed his hand over a can­dle, vow­ing to burn until he was allowed in. The dra­mat­ic stunt failed, and he quite lit­er­al­ly burned out of love.

This episode was just a chap­ter in a life of bril­liance, verve, des­per­ate cre­ative urge, beau­ty, and won­der. He was men­tal­ly ill and strug­gled all his life. In love, art, friend­ships, work dis­ci­pline. And he always tried too hard. 

Our web­sites try too hard, too. 
Lend me your ear and I’ll tell you why.

Van Going

Nav­i­ga­tion. Announce­ment bar. Mega­menu. Toll free num­ber. Client por­tal. Dis­trib­u­tor login. Live chat. Push noti­fi­ca­tion. Scrolling ban­ners. Most pop­u­lar. Fea­tured. New items. Search. Cart. Cat­a­log. Pro­mo ban­ner. Show­stop­per. SEO Rich text. Prod­uct list with fil­ters. Lat­est news. Social links. And feeds. Popup.

Our web­sites are a clut­tered mess. We put atten­tion, time and mon­ey into acquir­ing vis­i­tors, only to dump them into this mod­ern dig­i­tal house of hoard­ing, trust­ing they’ll know their way because ​“clut­ter” is now the default, and we’re all used to it, right?

We sure are, but wrong.

• 45% of vis­i­tors will leave the web­site immediately
• 53% of mobile vis­i­tors will drop if it takes longer than three sec­onds to load
• 80% of them won’t return

Clut­ter is fric­tion. Wait­ing equals bro­ken. Very wrong.

Relat­ed: Key Aspects of Ecom­merce UX Design

Van Gone

Did you know that Van Gogh used to re-paint the same can­vas over and over to save mon­ey? Adjust­ing your design, over and over, has the same effect. Some ideas:

Hold­ing out on that hero

Those big images scrolling at the start of your web­site? Yeah, no. The NN Group proved long ago that the first slide takes all the atten­tion with 40% of the clicks. You’re split­ting efforts in the most impor­tant real estate above the fold, run­ning scripts and load­ing big images. 

Speed of sound

Big names like Ama­zon told us years ago that load­ing speed equals suc­cess. 1% faster load = 1% more sales. Trim your home­page weight for a few weeks. Defer scripts that aren’t imme­di­ate­ly need­ed for the user expe­ri­ence, pri­or­i­tiz­ing essen­tial con­tent and load­ing non-essen­tial scripts asyn­chro­nous­ly in the back­ground, and mea­sure results. Tools like Google Tag Man­ag­er make this simple.

Every Pic­ture Tells a Story

9 in 10 buy­ing deci­sions are influ­enced by aes­thet­ics. Design qual­i­ty cre­ates cred­i­bil­i­ty because we are wired to asso­ciate beau­ty and har­mo­ny with desir­abil­i­ty. But beau­ty alone isn’t enough. 

We’re fight­ing for atten­tion, and bleak writ­ing leads to bleak sales. Say what mat­ters ear­ly, clear­ly, and attrac­tive­ly, because ulti­mate­ly, web­sites are ads. Not in a mod­ern PPC sense, but like Mad Men-era, old-school, full-page Sun­day spreads. 

Com­bine design and sto­ry­telling to cre­ate a site that res­onates with your audi­ence. Test your copy and visu­als to see what makes them click.

I Want It That Way

Users gonna use. Dif­fer­ent peo­ple take dif­fer­ent paths. Some will love a big menu with many choic­es. Oth­ers will feel deci­sion paral­y­sis. Or open twen­ty prod­ucts in sep­a­rate tabs. Or go straight to search. Not know­ing how your site is used means you can’t improve it. Learn what they do. Con­sid­er Clar­i­ty or Hotjar.

Relat­ed: Fix­at­ed on fixing

Catch me if you can

43% of US online shop­pers aban­doned a cart with­in the last 3 months for being ​“just brows­ing / not ready to buy” (Bay­mard).

Dri­ving new vis­i­tors is a big effort. 1% to 3% of them will buy. Half will flee. The oth­er 47%? Rea­son­ably indif­fer­ent. Just brows­ing. Use design to fun­nel them to your best con­tent. Cap­ture their atten­tion and data to build up a rela­tion­ship until they’re ready.

Relat­ed: Every pix­el is a billboard

Don’t let me down

Extra expens­es like tax­es and ship­ping costs cause 39% of vis­i­tors to leave.
We’ve all been there. You like some­thing that’s $40. With tax­es, it becomes $48. Sud­den­ly, it’s no longer attrac­tive. Set clear expec­ta­tions — about extras, ship­ping time­frames, returns, guar­an­tees, frac­tioned pay­ments. Make this infor­ma­tion vis­i­ble, clear, easy to under­stand, and ubiquitous.

In Broad Strokes

While I nev­er felt the urge to slice my ear or any­thing even remote­ly dra­mat­ic, I’ve been think­ing about Van Gogh late­ly. Maybe because we live in col­or­ful, crazy times. The kind that can make us try too hard, and fig­u­ra­tive­ly and will­ing­ly burn our­selves out. 

We should make the most of our efforts and sim­pli­fy­ing is key to achiev­ing that. 

It’s bet­ter to have an unfin­ished web­site that works, looks good, and sets clear terms, and that you can retouch peri­od­i­cal­ly, over an even­tu­al mas­ter­piece that makes any­one look­ing at it for more than 15 sec­onds want to paint it black.