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December 21 2007
Editorial – Web 2.0 clouds the issues
Jakob Nielsen states the obvious again with his latest post on Web 2.0 and retailing. It’s “dangerous for your profits” he claims, as yet again he desperately looks for a new angle to sell the KISS methodology.
Is it us or does Jakob Nielsen actually say anything new, or does he just make a lot of money out of stating the obvious? There’s always room for someone in every profession to point out that the emperor is naked but the latest blog post from mount Nielsen is just covering the same ground that he’s gone over year after year ie Bad design = Bad site but this time the message has “Web 2.0” liberally cut and pasted in for “bad design.” See http://www.useit.com/alertbox/web-2.html
Web 2.0, like any new technology starts off with an early adoption period where everyone blindly implements everything, as they hedge their bets and throw everything in to the pot, on the grounds that something in the technology must work. Then as the technology matures you see users start to use the technology selectively and only picking the bits that worked and dumping the features that definitely didn’t work. Then finally you get the mainstream adoption where you only use the bits that are guaranteed to work.
With Web 2.0 most of us are in the maturing technology phase, we’re still testing bits that we think work, while there are a few – well mostly Amazon - that have reached the mainstream phase, and then there are a crazy few that are still desperately chucking everything in.
Badly implemented Web 2.0 technology - or for that matter any other technology - that ignores the consumers wants and needs, will always fail. If you produce a blindingly good web site that looks visually perfect with all the “bells and whistles”, but puts up any sort of barrier to the consumer finding information about products and services or being able to buy, then it will fail. It’s as simple as that, or to make it even simpler still. If your granny, mother, sister can’t use your site without a manual, or you looking over their shoulder, then you’ve failed.
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