Yes, it’s for agents traversing the web universe like photons.
Your website is not for you
31–40 of 207 posts
Re: Your website is not for you
#32This is a distillation of what we used to (still do?) teach junior SWEs. "You are not the customer for the thing we're making, nor have you ever been. You don't know what they want/need."
This is true but the common implication, "UX research knows your customer" is horseapples. I will point out we allow ourselves to believe that UX research knows the customer because we train like the above. We tell our engineers they don't know what the customer wants and when it comes time to put a foot down, they have nowhere firm to stand.
Re: Your website is not for you
#33A website is a compromise between three parties. User: I want to get the information I came for. Business: I want to build brand trust and drive conversion. Internal organization: I want the owner’s taste and preferences to be reflected. The article strongly says that a website is for the user. I agree with the spirit of that argument, but in practice, most users’ “taste” is shaped by brand reputation. And where does…
Why do people pay so much money for reports from dubious firms like Gartner? The game they are playing is almost like a coin toss. If you look at the Gartner reports that become publicly visible, they are often wrong. So why do reports from companies like Gartner still sell? Because they reduce the anxiety of the owner or decision-maker. Business is complex. Even a bad product can succeed because of advertising. Exag…
How does this generalize to firms with more than one stakeholder/owner? I don't see how it does without some magic where we assume that all members of e.g. the C-suite have similar, model-able reasoning.
Re: Your website is not for you
#34Interesting post. It pairs well with this other one^1 I bookmarked just yesterday about the way business websites' home pages so often suffer from lack of ownership (a la "tragedy of the commons"). In both cases, I'm reminded of Julie Zhuo's awesome "How to be Strategic" post^2 which emphasizes being crystal clear on WHOSE problem you're trying to solve.
1. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/website-you-havent-rebuilt-ma...
2. https://medium.com/@joulee/how-to-be-strategic-f6630a44f86b
PS Disclaimer: It feels strange to share links to LIN and Medium, two problematic platforms I'd prefer not to support. But these specific posts are worthwhile, so I'm sharing anyway.
Re: Your website is not for you
#35Perhaps better stated: Your company's website isn't for you, it's to pursue the agenda of your company. Your personal homepage is for you, if you can free yourself from view count as a success metric.
I think it's implicit...
Re: Your website is not for you
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do people pay so much money for reports from dubious firms like Gartner? The game they are playing is almost like a coin toss. If you look at the Gartner reports that become publicly visible, they are often wrong. So why do reports from companies like Gartner still sell? Because they reduce the anxiety of the owner or decision-maker. Business is complex. Even a bad product can succeed because of advertising. Exag…
How does this generalize to firms with more than one stakeholder/owner? I don't see how it does without some magic where we assume that all members of e.g. the C-suite have similar, model-able reasoning.
[deleted]
Re: Your website is not for you
#37I have felt this a lot when designing the landing page for my SQL canvas side project. _I_ really want to write about DuckDB WASM, pre-signed URLs and how cool Cloudflare's durable objects are. But my target audience are data analysts, and they just want to analyze some data! I have gone through a lot of design revisions because I have a hard time containing my technical excitement. I was surprised how hard communica…
Maybe that's why I am not in your target audience, but love how the design looks. I have bookmarked it also. You show so many features and it is nice in the way it is being presented and is also mobile friendly. Also I too am a fan of neobrutalism. :)
How do you know what his side project is? I couldn’t find a link.
Re: Your website is not for you
#38No, my website is for me and not everything is a product
Re: Your website is not for you
#39...and now it's for AI to "consoom"...
Re: Your website is not for you
#40The 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…
[dead]