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Your website is not for you

websmith.studio

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Re: Your website is not for you

#71

Post by tqwhite »

xyzelement wrote: post #28

The only problem with this analysis is that in practice a lot of the designers don't understand the customer and don't understand the business. Don't understand the market, at least compared to the founders or people who've been in the space for a long time. So there's a bit of a false confidence where the designers think they know what's really right because they did "scientific approach". But in reality the founder…

"in practice"? Disrespectful, of course, but also not true.

In practice, most designers know what they are doing as well as you know your job. If yours doesn't, you hired a quack.

Here. Try this, in practice, most business owners don't know what they are doing. In practice, most programmers write shit. It's easy to bitch at artists because most people don't understand what they do. Don't be one of those people.

Re: Your website is not for you

#72

Post by basket_horse »

xyzelement wrote: post #28

The only problem with this analysis is that in practice a lot of the designers don't understand the customer and don't understand the business. Don't understand the market, at least compared to the founders or people who've been in the space for a long time. So there's a bit of a false confidence where the designers think they know what's really right because they did "scientific approach". But in reality the founder…

Couldn’t agree more. Many designers I’ve worked with have been good at making things aesthetically pleasing, but have utterly failed to understand the nuances of the software. This is obviously not all designers, and there are good ones, but more often than not I find them struggling as they are not technical experts nor business experts. This is for b2b software.

Re: Your website is not for you

#76

Post by andrewingram »

I remember regularly scrambling to redesign our marketing site, because the CEO was going to start speaking to investors in less than a week. So we'd always end up with a homepage that represented a new narrative the CEO was trying out, often at the expense of current customers being able to find what they were looking for (our homepage was also our primary entry point into the onboarding funnel).

Re: Your website is not for you

#77

Post by kamma4434 »

xyzelement wrote: post #28

The only problem with this analysis is that in practice a lot of the designers don't understand the customer and don't understand the business. Don't understand the market, at least compared to the founders or people who've been in the space for a long time. So there's a bit of a false confidence where the designers think they know what's really right because they did "scientific approach". But in reality the founder…

> The only problem with this analysis is that in practice a lot of the designers don't understand the customer and don't understand the business.

And want something shiny done so they can show it in their portfolio. Especially the ones who consider themselves ‘artists’.

Re: Your website is not for you

#79

Post by kamma4434 »

basket_horse wrote: post #72
xyzelement wrote: post #28

The only problem with this analysis is that in practice a lot of the designers don't understand the customer and don't understand the business. Don't understand the market, at least compared to the founders or people who've been in the space for a long time. So there's a bit of a false confidence where the designers think they know what's really right because they did "scientific approach". But in reality the founder…

Couldn’t agree more. Many designers I’ve worked with have been good at making things aesthetically pleasing, but have utterly failed to understand the nuances of the software. This is obviously not all designers, and there are good ones, but more often than not I find them struggling as they are not technical experts nor business experts. This is for b2b software.

Same experience. Nice on Canva but not necessarily clear for users

Re: Your website is not for you

#80

Post by dadie »

Sorry to be frank and for the upcoming rant as your site is mostly fine, but looking at most websites I visite these days be it from a company, a service, a webshop, an open source project, a forum, a blog, a newspaper or almost any form of social media. I'd say I do not know for whom anyone is designing those sites, but I can clearly say it is not for me (as a human user and/or customer).

The websites with the best UX I know are mostly those who haven't really changed for the past 20 years.

I might be crazy but assume to not be alone in this one, as I have yet to find someone who likes their back button being hijacked. Likes being blasted by an autoplay video on max volume. Likes seeing the UI reorganized almost every other month. Likes seeing constantly moving and/or blinking elements on a mostly text based website.

I've yet to hear from someone liking no longer being able to say "no" and being only allowed to say "yes" or "maybe later" (which is a code for "I'll annoy you till you finally break and say yes"). I've yet to hear someone liking to have less informationen visible and being forced to navigate a maze of menu items for things which used to be just their. Or who simply likes not being able to tell what is or isn't an element which can be interacted with.

Who are those people who like to give almost every other site their phone number? And who are those who likes telling almost every other click how the "experience" with the website was so far? Who are those people who like being reminded about the mostly useless annoying AI assistance every other click?

I've yet to find someone who sad "Oh boy, it was really nice that they asked me to give the online shop on some rando rating site 5 stars". Or "Oh boy, I sure love the popup about signing up to the awesome informative newsletter each time I visit the site". Or "I really like that my PC fan starts to spin audible whenever I go to this website". Or "Oh yes, I was so happy being asked to install the mobile app for an rando website I found via a search engine" Or "It's really nice that I always have to solve a captcha and noone is telling me why"

In my experience people do not like modern website, they at most tolerate them. It's like paying taxes. Can't do nothing about it.

Edit: Typos

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