Literature Review > Digital Design
The web is a unique communications medium in that it encourages human interaction instead of passive consumption, making it fundamental to have a well-designed site that engages your visitor, while branding your image simultaneously. (Zeldman, 2002) To achieve a well designed website that communicates a given brand effectively, a variety of specializations must be at play, including digital marketing specialists, graphic / interface designers, information architects, content producers, and programmers. As the primary client contact, the digital marketing specialist is the gatekeeper in terms of target market information, the design review process, and making sure the final design hits the bulls-eye in terms of the client's objectives. Wearing the organization hat, the information architects and content producers will work together closely to develop genre specific labeling and verbiage to indicate important areas of the site and navigation elements that reflect the brand. And, lastly, the graphic designers and technologists will work together to develop the necessary structure and design elements for the site. All web development teams should have a combination of the above expertise in their digital trick bag in order to create sites that are usable and consistent across products and brands.
The nature of the web gives digital marketing specialists and developers the ability to uniquely track users within a given website or digital architecture. It is this special perspective that makes the web so tantalizing to advertising and marketing practitioners. Visitors' behaviors can be tracked throughout a website, letting the client know which pages are most usable, i.e. popular and those that need renovation. Digital marketing specialists can use this information to drive content and layout to the special needs of their target visitor. The most prominent tools for tracking a website's usability are traffic analysis tools (i.e. data collection and mining tools) and site validation tools.
The usability and accessibility of a website tie directly to a users experience when they interact with your brand online. If a given website is not friendly to current customers, visually impaired or otherwise disabled customers, and first-time visitors, then that share of the market and brand community has been lost. If a potential customer is unable to efficiently and effectively accomplish their goals on a website, he/she is on to the next one, with a more intuitive, user-friendly interface. Nielsen (2000) aptly describes this phenomenon in his book Designing Web Usability, "Usability rules the Web. Simply stated, if the customer can't find a product, then he or she will not buy it. The Web is the ultimate customer empowering environment. He or she who clicks the mouse gets to decide everything. It is so easy to go elsewhere; all the competitors in the world are but a mouse click away." (p.9) A dysfunctional website not only loses dollars in sales, but also reflects poorly on the brand the website represents. Hence the need for the integration of usability standards and tactics into every website plan from the beginning.
The web, being the ever-changing medium that it is, is well suited to the idea of "digital Darwinism" (Nielsen, 2000) meaning that those websites who perform the best and most quickly adapt to change will be those that survive into the next phase of the online progression. This idea ties to usability, web consumers and the developers of digital environments. Consumers wish to navigate the web with ease and in a timely manner. Developers wish to provide this service seamlessly but sometimes don't have the appropriate directive to get them there. Usability specialists wish to represent the user and have an appropriate impact on the finished product. In order to serve both the consumer and creator, websites must be scalable in terms of content delivery and structure, be accessible from every angle, and be relevant both in terms of time spent on the project and time spent by consumers on the website.
Digital marketing practitioners must be keen to the idea that usability is a necessity, not an afterthought. Every moment a consumer spends with a given brand online is important and makes an impact. As mentioned above, the relevance of presented content and an appropriate, user-friendly context is extremely imperative for brands to excel on the web. In its best form, website design can help extend brand loyalty through both form and function.