Navigation, emotion and giraffes

Web content guru Gerry McGovern is one of my favorite bloggers -- mostly because some of his posts at Giraffe Forum give me a nervous twitch. Don't get me wrong, I read McGovern pretty closely, but every once in a while he strikes a nerve.

In a recent post in which he argues that every website is NOT different, he writes, "Please don’t think about your website from the point of view of emotional branding. Don’t fall into the trap of designing for exceptions." He concludes with, "There are now solid rules for managing websites. The first one is: Design for what is common, not for what is exceptional."

In many ways, I agree, but I don't think it's that black and white. I think you need to focus on what's common and anticipate the exceptional. I think Jeff Bezos was the first to talk about accelerated serendipity as a design model on the web. Think about how Amazon is built. You go there knowing that you want McGovern's book Killer Web Content but learn about Avinash Kaushik's book on web analytics, Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think, and Jakob Nielsen's book on eye tracking. Not a bad set of books that you might not have known that you should read and only found because they anticipated.

I think this extends to interactive content as well. In the university context, there are certainly times when prospective students are on a navigation mission. They want to know the majors, location, price, financial aid, weather, etc. and that's it. So, here McGovern's principles are dead on. But, we also know that they use the web heavily to get a sense of place. They want to see photos, videos, read some short stories, etc. Good .edu web design, in my opinion, allows for both. The site is quickly and easily navigated but also has plenty of opportunities to highlight the "experience."

This is where the accelerated serendipity happens. A student might be looking to see if there is a film studies program -- but once they're on the page, it's a missed opportunity not to show some student-produced films or stories about film on campus that they didn't necessarily know they'd find. This allows them to connect with the people -- the faculty, the current students, and others on campus -- who they will study with once they enroll. Here's where I really depart with McGovern's argument. A college website isn't strictly transactional -- the emotional draw is just as important as access to key content, but perhaps not at the same time in the college search process.